MABGH 



Confessions about diet — Cures for rheumatism — Effects of tea- 

 drinking — Sparing animal life a bad reason for vegetarianism 

 — The Berlin foot-raee — Mrs. Crow in Edinburgh — Bagehot on 

 luxury — A word about babies — German and English nurseries — 

 Sir Biehard Thorne Thome on raw milk — The New Education 

 Difficulty of understanding young children — Gardening — 

 Cooking. 



I feel at last the moment has come when I must make 

 a confession. I am a non- meat -eater ! I know that 

 this will probably entail the loss of the good opinion of 

 my readers, and I should never have dreamt of bringing 

 forward so personal a matter, had I not felt compelled 

 to do so in consequence of the numbers of letters I have 

 received in which the writers deplore their loss of health, 

 their gout and rheumatism, and the general aUments 

 that prevent their going into the garden, etc. This 

 strikes me as unnatural and wrong. There is no reason 

 at all, unless there be actual disease, that sickness 

 should, as a matter of course, accompany old age any 

 more than any other period of life. 



This chapter is not intended for the young or the 

 healthy or the reaUy sick, but for those chronic sufferers 

 who are constantly appealing to the medical profession 

 for ' something ' that will cure their aches and pains, 

 their sleepless nights, their stiff joints, and their neu- 

 ralgias, and who put all their faith in drugs which, even 

 when they seem to do good, turn out to be palliatives, 

 not cures — that is, in the case of constitutions where the 

 ailments are the result of gout and rheumatism. 



(220) 



