Goo] AND SYMBOLS. 135 



The Political Value of Good Feeding. 



Zimmerman has correctly observed that " hunger is the 

 mother of impatience and anger." Those of the ruling classes 

 who are quick to denounce, and ready to be apprehensive of 

 the mob, would do well to bear this in mind. Depend upon it, 

 good feeding has a far greater political value than they suppose. 

 History does not furnish accounts of riots, uproars, or atrocities 

 committed by well-fed mobs. A hungry mob is a dangerous 

 mob. If the supercilious politician has no real sympathy 

 whatever with the people, he should still even as a measure of 

 expediency do what he can to feed them if he fears them. He 

 may look upon the hungry classes as very inferior creatures, 

 but he will find they are uncommonly like himself in being 

 easily accessible to the influences of good feeding. The ser- 

 pents of faction, however much they hiss around the altars of 

 sedition, are much like other serpents. Whenever any of the 

 serpent kind have gorged themselves to a great extent, when- 

 ever their body is seen particularly distended with food, they 

 then become torpid, and may be approached and destroyed 

 with safety. Patient of hunger to a surprising degree, when- 

 ever they seize and swallow their prey, they seem like surfeited 

 gluttons, unwieldy, stupid, helpless, and sleepy ; they at that 

 time seek some retreat, where they may lurk for several days 

 together and digest their meal in safety : the smallest effort 

 at that time is capable of destroying them ; they can scarcely 

 make any resistance, and they are equally unqualified for flight 

 or opposition. That is the happy opportunity of attacking 

 them with success ; at that time the naked Indian himself does 

 not fear to assail them, and the most timorous politician would 

 not be too cowardly to follow. A proverb in the Efik language 

 says : " It is the stomach which rules the man." A. 



Good Pound where least Expected. 



The eggs of the turtle are thought as great delicacies as its 

 flesh ; and it is rather a remarkable fact, that although the flesh 

 of the hawksbill turtle is distasteful to all palates, and hurtful 



