

SUGAE. 257 



A word to the wise : white sugar is ivliite sugar, 110 

 matter how prepared. Should the refiner see good to temper 

 his blow-up with the contents of Macbeth's witches' caldron, 

 well and good so long as we don't eat the foul things there- 

 in, but only the things that some wizard- working of the 

 witches' broth has purified ; but the sugar-refiner vends cer- 

 tain coloured, soft, and sloppy goods, that, perhaps, the less 

 we say about the better. Smell moist sugar, my friends, be- 

 fore buying it ! and leave the luxury of treacle to the chil- 

 dren ; \vhose stock of sentiment, poor dears, lies upon their 

 palates and deep down in their little stomachs. 



I now write ' finis' as to sugar of the cane. There are 

 other sugars, as we know all fat-makers, none flesh-makers 

 enemies to the undertakers* all as chemists have pro- 

 claimed and Mr. Banting has made manifest. To treat of 

 them at this time would be impossible ; nor does that signify 

 much. 



I do not pretend to instruct people. Personal diffidence, 

 in the first place, rebels; second, people rebel against in- 

 struction. People are right. 



Pain and unhappiness have ever been the fruit of the tree 

 of knowledge, and ever will. Literally as well as figuratively 

 it is all the same ! From Eve's knowledge of the flavour of 

 her stolen apple, to your knowledge, or mine, of molasses and 

 treacle it is all the same ! Blessed be ignorance, then ! a 

 reprobation to popular lecturers, who go about illustrating 

 the ways of nature, on black-boards, in cabalistic signs drawn 

 with chalk. Condemnation to middle-class education; to 

 peripatetic philosophy of all sorts especially the sort taught 

 in ladies' schools ! Bad luck to female doctors ! Blessed the 

 memory of dear poet Cowper, and the memory of his cud- 

 chewing hare ! Utterly reprobated and contemned be that 



* Because the fatter the corpse the bigger the coffin for the same price. 

 That consideration induced Mr. Banting, himself a maker of coffins, to 

 write his book. 



S 



