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THERE was a time, if belief may be placed in some 

 annalists, when certain practices of the Is Animal 

 French nobility gravely engaged the atten- ^f 683 - * 17 

 tion of the legislature. The story goes that a fashion- 

 able restorative for a seigneur fatigued with the chase, 

 and a sure remedy for cold feet, was to plunge the 

 said feet into the entrails of a freshly-killed peasant. 

 It was an expensive recipe in days when peasants, 

 counting as live-stock upon the lord's lands, con- 

 stituted an important part of his wealth, and probably 

 was only in use in the leading families ; nevertheless, 

 it was enacted that no lord returning from hunting 

 should use up more than two peasants in this way one 

 for each foot. Western Europeans have shifted their 

 sentimental standpoint since those distant and legend- 

 ary days. We are now so far from being indifferent to 

 preserving the humblest human life, that the resources 

 of science are strained to retain the vital spark, even in 

 those frail shards of humanity which, in a rougher age, 

 would have been broken in a very few years. Nobody 

 questions the moral duty of this, though it is permitted 



