172 ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 



instead of being compelled, in addition, to do what the teeth should 

 previously have done. Yet this practice is universal. Is eating 

 indeed so very onerous a task that it should thus be hurried 

 and slighted ? Most men pitch and shovel in their food in great 

 hunks, mouthful following mouthful, thick and fast, which they give 

 twist or two, hit a crack or two, and poke down 'in a jiffy ;' eat- 

 ing in five minutes as much as would take a full hour to eat well. 

 Americans generally treat eating as they treat impertinent customers 

 dismiss it without ceremony for something appertaining to busi- 

 ness. Yet, than the due feeding of the body, what is more im- 

 portant 1 Of course the time occupied in eating should correspond. 

 Besides, how can we expect to enjoy the gustatory pleasure nature 

 has associated with eating, unless we take ample time for such 

 enjoyment? Instead of dispatching our meals to get to business, 

 we should dispatch business, and eat at perfect leisure. We should 

 never sit down to the table in a hurry, or till we have dismissed 

 from the mind all idea that we have anything else on hand, and 

 should then eat as leisurely as if time and tide waited for us. The 

 ox and horse eat as quietly as though their food was their all. Only 

 swine guttle down their food. And well they may ; for their tastes 

 are so coarse that they eat what is most loathsome, and derive their 

 pleasure from quantity mainly. Shall man imitate the swine? 

 Shall he bolt his food and hurry off to business, and thus forego 

 gustatory enjoyment, and also shorten his days ; thereby curtailing 

 that very business he is so anxious to do ? Take ample time to eat 

 well, and you will live probably twice as long, and this protraction 

 of life will enable you to do more business. Eating fast is the 

 worst possible stroke of business policy you can adopt. Let busi- 

 ness stand, while you eat with the utmost deliberation. Let nothing 

 hurry you to, or at, or from the table. Make eating a paramount 

 business, and the acquisition of wealth a trifling toy in comparison. 

 No one should deposit v an ordinary meal in less than an hour. 

 How foolish to cram it down with swinish voracity in five minutes ! 

 Yet sapheads often make quick eating their boast. 



Though the loss of gustatory enjoyment that most delightful 

 repast consequent on eating fast, is great and irreparable, yet this 

 is one of its smallest and lightest evils. It breaks down the sto- 

 mach, and thus unmans and diseases the entire system. No other 

 cause, if even a combination of causes, is as prolific of dyspepsia 

 and all its dire array of evils, as this. We have not overrated the 

 importance of a due selection of food, yet its proper mastication is 



