DIGESTION AND FOOD. 55 



prepare the meals, or of the household to cat them. These 

 are varied, and often very widely, to meet the plans and the 

 accidents of business. These people dine sometimes very 

 late, and at other times very early. There are many em- 

 ployed in cities at a distance from their homes. They do 

 not return at noon, nor do they dine at any regular boarding 

 place; but they eat at eating-houses, at any hour, when the 

 business of their shops, their stores, or their offices, gives them 

 leisure. Occasionally, for want of time, they omit their 

 dinner entirely. All these irregular habits of eating disturb 

 their regular habits of digestion, and consequently leave them 

 with somewhat less power of application and labor for the 

 next succeeding hours. 



110. In general, the intervals of the meals, during the 

 active part of the day, should not be more than six or seven 

 hours. Dinner should follow the morning meal, and supper 

 should follow the noon meal, within this period. The fre- 

 quency of eating should follow the law of appetite, described 

 in 102, 103, p. 52; and, regarding this law, children and 

 laborers should have shorter intervals, and eat more fre- 

 quently than the mature and the inactive. 



CHAPTER XII. 



Breakfast should be soon after rising. If it be late, a Lunch should 

 be taken early in the Morning. Health better sustained when 

 full. Breakfast should be before Labor or Exposure. Hour of 

 Dinner. Interval between Breakfast and Dinner. Forenoon 

 Lunch good in some Cases. Needed by those who breakfast 

 early and dine late. Night Suppers injurious. Summary of 

 Meals. 



111. DURING the hours of sleep, there is no action of the 

 body, and comparatively little waste ; therefore the interval 

 between the evening and the morning meal may be longer 

 than the interval between the meals which are taken in the 

 active part of the day. Yet the store of nutriment in the 



