DIET AND LUXURY. 
agreement when engaged that there is to be no oatmeal 
of any sort supplied, as part or portion of their 
food ; they go in for hot rolls, loaf bread and tea. Coffee 
is in no favour, tea is the cry. This is bad enough 
for house servants, but what shall we say of the working 
man at eight to ten hours’ work a day, having his tea 
and loaf of bread for morning breakfast, and tea, toast 
and butter for evening meal, and very likely a dinner 
and supper of butcher’s meat, and it is the same 
with working people everywhere, more pay, and better 
food, We do not suppose it is so with the cooly, al- 
though he is at all times ready for a catch at more 
pay ; you won’t catch him nodding on this point ! 
We suspect he lives, as far as regards food, very 
much the same now as be did before ; successive 
generations have made little change in this. It is 
rice and curry now, as it was a thousand years ago. 
We cannot say anything of any certainty about the 
thousand, having had no personal experience so far back 
as that ! 
But, be it oatmeal porridge, or be it rice and curry, 
we say,, and say decidedly, that it is not a good sign 
for any country, or of the customs of its inhabitants, 
when they they utterly discard the food and dishes 
upon which their predecessors for many generations 
lived, preserved their health, strength, and generally 
flourished. It is a sign of the creeping in of luxury, 
for you will always find the old-fashioned now forsaken 
dishes were simple, plain, homely fare, but very whole- 
some and nourishing. 
We do not at all mean to say, that Ceylon coffee 
planters should live upon rice and curry, or that Scotch- 
men at home should live upon porridge and oatmeal 
cakes and bannocks. But we assert, that both of these 
articles should enter into the usual diet of the re- 
spective countries, and not be utterly put aside, as 
they now, indeed, most frequently are. It was a 
grave error in the old planter’s life, but it was an 
unavoidable one, proceeding from necessity, liis living 
entirely upon rice and curry, and it may be, we do 
not say it is, only may be, an error in some planters 
of the present day, that they never eat rice and 
curry at all. We have often been told by medical 
gentlemen in the old country, who surely ought to 
know, that is not good for one, especially in a warm 
climate like Ceylon, to live so much on butcher’s 
meat, as some, and the writer himself, used to do. 
There used to be a great deal too much meat eaten, 
always at breakfast and dinner, and frequently at 
tifl&n, whereas, in our old home climate, the rule 
is, only once a day at dinner. No doubt the habits 
