196 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 



hunters who must track their quarry through 

 marshy and treacherous lands, and one cannot 

 forget their confiding catspaw, that desolated 

 pig, created only to be betrayed and robbed of 

 the fungi of his labors. He is one of the pathetic 

 characters of history, born to secret sorrow, vic- 

 timized by those superior tastes which do not be- 

 come his lowly station. Born to labor and to' 

 suffer, but not to eat. To this day he commands 

 my sympathy; his ghost lean, bourgeois, re- 

 proachful looks out at me from every market- 

 place in the world where the truffle proclaims 

 his faithful service. 



But the pancake is a pancake, nothing more. 

 It is without inherent or artificial glamour; and 

 this unfortunately, when you come right down 

 to it, is true of food in general. For food, after 

 all, is one of the lesser considerations; the con- 

 noisseur, the gourmet, even the gourmand, 

 spends no more than four hours out of the day 

 at his table. From the cycle, he may select four 

 in which to eat; but whether he will or not, he 

 must set aside seven of the twenty-four in which 

 to sleep. 



Sleeping, then, as opposed to eating, is of al- 

 most double importance, since it consumes nearly 



