g2 A Plea for the Kitchen-Garden. 



one occasion for asking six cents a pound for it. He had not the least 

 idea of transgressing the third commandment ; but he had the habit of 

 using a favorite interjection whenever any thing struck him witli astonish- 

 ment : and on this occasion he said, " Good George ! veal never was worth 

 six cents a pound ; but I understand it is going at this price." Now we 

 pay twenty-five cents for a pound of veal-steak, and eat more of it than 

 when it sold for six. We hope the day is far distant when the American 

 laborer will be reduced to one joint of meat for his week's allowance. But 

 is there not a golden mean between our extravagant use of meat and the 

 almost exclusively vegetable diet of the foreign peasantry } Economy 

 certainly demands this. .It is estimated that it requires fifteen bushels of 

 corn to make a hundred pounds of pork. Now, it is obvious, that, if 

 fed to man directly in the form of " johnny-cake " and baked pudding, 

 the corn would go three times as far in supporting the vital energies as in 

 the form of pork. 



Health would also be promoted by a greater intermixture of vegetables in 

 our diet. Meat is highly-concentrated food. It acts on the system much 

 as lard-oil under the boiler of a Western steamboat. It raises the steam 

 indeed, and brings all the machinery into lively play ; but there is a limit 

 to the number of strokes each engine can make ere wearing out, and this 

 limit is sooner reached with a rapid motion, and the danger of collapsing 

 the flues is far greater when the steam is up at high-pressure point. The 

 criticism which the English generally make upon us is, that we are a fast 

 nation ; and may not our fast habits be attributed in great measure to our 

 meat diet ? Should not we wear better if we spent more time in our gar- 

 dens, and enjoyed more of the products of our labor on our tables ? We 

 are no Grahamites, and have full faith in meat in its place, and should be 

 very sorry to have Chinese pusillanimity ingrafted on our American manhood 

 by an exclusively vegetable diet ; but we do maintain that we should live 

 longer, and take life more easily, if we took more starch in our food. A 

 person working hard, especially in the open air, may eat his pork and cab- 

 bage three times a day, and feel an appetite for it ; but let him continue 

 this mode of life a few years, and his vital energies will be found prema- 

 turely exhausted. In the summer especially, the juicy, cooling vegetable, 

 rather than the inflammatory meat, should constitute the main bulk of our 



