Table Topics

by Mrs. E.E. Kellogg

　　"Let appetite wear reason's golden chain, and find in due restrain its luxury." A man's food, when he has the means and opportunity of selecting it, suggests his moral nature. Many a Christian is trying to do by prayer that which cannot be done except through corrected diet. —Talmage. Our pious ancestors enacted a law that suicides should be buried where four roads meet, and that a cart-load of stones should be thrown upon the body. Yet, when gentlemen or ladies commit suicide, not by cord or steel, but by turtle soup or lobster salad, they may be buried on consecrated ground, and the public are not ashamed to read an epitaph upon their tombstones false enough to make the marble blush. —Horace Mann. It is related by a gentleman who had an appointment to breakfast with the late A.T. Stewart, that the butler placed before them both an elaborate bill of fare; the visitor selected a list of rare dishes, and was quite abashed when Mr. Stewart said, "Bring me my usual breakfast,—oatmeal and boiled eggs." He then explained to his friend that he found simple food a necessity to him, otherwise he could not think clearly. That unobscured brain applied to nobler ends would have won higher results, but the principle remains the same. —Sel. Study simplicity in the number of dishes, and a variety in the character of the meals. —Sel. I have come to the conclusion that more than half the disease which embitters life is due to avoidable errors in diet, ... and that more mischief, in the form of actual disease, of impaired vigor, and of shortened life, accrues to civilized man from erroneous habits of eating than from the habitual use of alcoholic drink, considerable as I know that evil to be. —Sir Henry Thompson. The ancient Gauls, who were a very brave, strong, and hearty race, lived very abstemiously. Their food was milk, berries, and herbs. They made bread of nuts. They had a very peculiar fashion of wearing a metal ring around the body, the size of which was regulated by act of Parliament. Any man who outgrew in circumference his metal ring was looked upon as a lazy glutton, and consequently was disgraced. To keep in health this rule is wise: Eat only when you need, and relish food, chew thoroughly that it may do you good, have it well cooked, unspiced, and undisguised. —Leonardo da Vinci. Now good digestion waits on appetite, and health on both —Shakespeare. We live not upon what we eat, but upon what we digest. —Abernethy. If we consider the amount of ill temper, despondency, and general unhappiness which arises from want of proper digestion and assimilation of our food, it seems obviously well worth while to put forth every effort, and undergo any sacrifice, for the purpose of avoiding indigestion, with its resulting bodily ills; and yet year after year, from the cradle to the grave, we go on violating the plainest and simplest laws of health at the temptation of Cooks, caterers, and confectioners, whose share in shortening the average term of human life is probably nearly equal to that of the combined armies and navies of the world. —Richardson. Almost every human malady is connected, either by highway or byway, with the stomach. —Sir Francis Head. It is a well-established fact that a leg of mutton caused a revolution in the affairs of Europe. Just before the battle of Leipsic, Napoleon the Great insisted on dining on boiled mutton, although his physicians warned him that it would disagree with him. The emperor's brain resented the liberty taken with its colleague, the stomach; the monarch's equilibrium was overturned, the battle lost, and a new page opened in history. --Sel. Cattle know when to go home from grazing, but a foolish man never knows his stomachs measures. --Scandinavian Proverb. The kitchen (that is, your stomach) being out of order, the garret (the head) cannot be right, and every room in the house becomes affected. Remedy the evil in the kitchen, and all will be right in parlor and chamber. If you put improper food into the stomach, you play the mischief with it, and with the whole machine besides. --Abernathy. One fourth of what we eat keeps us, and the other three fourths we keep at the peril of our lives. —Abernethy.