THE SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS 



pleasure that it affords the palate. Most Americans 

 find it hard to convince themselves thart they have 

 dined satisfactorily when this course is lacking. They 

 pine for it when in foreign lands, and ver]f commonly 

 teach their European cooks to make desserts that at 

 least bear some resemblance to the pies, puddings, and 

 sundry creamy concoctions of their native heath. To 

 deprive them of these " sweets," as the British vocab- 

 ulary styles them, would be to inflict a virtual pun- 

 ishment. To inveigh against that highest product of 

 culinary art, the New England pie, seems next door 

 to an assault upon the Constitution. 



Far be it from me to disturb the slumbers of my seven 

 generations of New England ancestors b} r such blas- 

 phemy. Let us by all means honor the pie and its 

 cousins-german; but let us reflect that no one can do 

 full justice to these crowning gastronomic gifts who 

 approaches them with an appetite already i sated. A 

 certain reserve in dealing with the earlier courses of 

 the dinner will insure the dessert a better- -merited re- 

 ception from both palate and digestive syst tern. 



But, this, after all, amounts to nothing 5 more than 

 the counselling of moderation in eating i is a general 

 principle. Rest assured, however, that there is no 

 principle more in need of exploitatioi a. Theognis 

 assures us, speaking for his contempoi :aries of old 

 Greece, that "Satiety has killed far more t han famine"; 

 a familiar Latin proverb declares, in li ke vein, that 

 "Gluttony kills more than the sword"; and the voice 

 of the modern physiologist gives us warnv ng that in this 

 regard times are not greatly changed in f;hi$ latter day. 



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