It need not be wondered at, that a palate which has been so long tickled by variety, and by so many stimulating mixtures of food, should come to regard cold water for drink as insipid; and should feel dissatisfied with it, and desirous of boiling some narcotic or poisonous herb in it, or brewing it with something which will impart to it more or less of alcohol. The wonder is, not that some of our epicures become drunkards, but that all of them do not.

Dr. Cadogan alludes to a sad mistake everywhere made about light food; and condemns, very justly, hard-boiled custards, pastry, &c. It is very strange that these substances—for these are among the injurious articles which I call mixtures—should ever have obtained currency in the world, to the exclusion of bread, which, as the same writer justly says, is among the lightest articles of food which are known.

It is strange, in particular, what views people have about bread. Judging from what I see, I am compelled to believe that there are few who regard it in any other light than as a kind of necessary evil. They appear to eat it, not because they are fond of it, by itself, but because they must eat it; or rather, because it is a fashionable article; and not to make believe they eat it, at the least, would be unfashionable. They will get rid of it, however, when they can. And when they must eat it, they soak it, or cover it with butter or milk, or something else which will render it tolerable—or toast it. And use it as they may, it must be hot from the oven. After it is once cold, very few will eat it. The idea, above all, of making a full meal of simple cold bread, twenty-four hours old, would be rejected by ninety-nine persons in a hundred; and by some with abhorrence.

People not only dislike bread, but regard it as unnutritious. I have heard many a fond parent say to the child who ate no meat, and seemed to depend almost wholly on bread—"Why, my dear child, you will starve if you eat no meat. Do at least put some butter on your bread or your potatoes." A thousand times have I been admonished, when eating my vegetable dinner during the hot and fatiguing days of summer—for I was bred to the farm, and ate little or no meat till I was fourteen years of age—to eat more butter, or cheese, or something that would give me strength; for I could not work, they said, without something more nourishing than bread and the other vegetables. And yet few if any boys of my age did more work, or performed it better, or with more ease, than myself. And I early observed the same thing in other vegetable eaters.

The truth is, there is nothing in the world better adapted to the daily wants of the human stomach than good bread; and few things more nutritious. There may be a little more nutriment in eggs or jelly; but if the former are hard-boiled, the stomach cannot digest them; and fat meat of any kind is digested with great difficulty. Indeed it is doubtful whether stomachs in temperate climates digest fat at all. They may dissolve it, but that is not making good chyle of it. They may even reduce it to chyle; but chyle is not blood. Fat may slip through the system without much of it adhering; and I think it pretty evident that it usually does so.

The muscle—the lean part of animals—may be nearly as nutritious as good bread, and is more easily digested. But it is very far from being proved that, for the healthy, those things are always best which are most easily digested. Nobody will pretend that potatoes are better for us than bread; and yet the experiments of Dr. Beaumont seem to prove that boiled or roasted potatoes are much more quick and easy of digestion than bread of the first and best quality. Even over-boiled eggs and raw cabbage, bad as they are, are dissolved in the stomach, and appear to be digested as quick, if not quicker, than good wheat bread. But nobody in the world will pretend they form more wholesome food. Neither is meat—even lean meat—necessarily more wholesome, or better calculated to give strength than bread, simply be cause it is more quickly and easily digested. It would be nearer the truth to say, that those substances which digest slowest (provided they do not irritate) are best adapted to the wants of the human stomach.

The philosopher LOCKE—perhaps from his knowledge of medicine—gives some excellent directions on this subject. "Great care should be used," be says, that the child "eat bread plentifully, both alone and with everything else; and whatever he eats that is solid, make him chew it well." This writer, by the way, supposed that the teeth were made to be used in beating our food; and that we ought neither to swallow it without chewing, as is customary in our busy New England, nor to mash or soak it in order to save the labor of mastication—a practice almost equally universal. But let us hear his own words.

"As for his diet, it ought to be very plain and simple; and if I might advise, flesh should be forborne, at least till he is two or three years old. But of whatever advantage this may be to his future health and strength, I fear it will hardly be consented to by parents, misled by the custom of eating too much flesh themselves, who will be apt to think their children—as they do themselves—in danger to be starved; if they have not flesh at least twice a day. This I am sure, children would breed their teeth with much less danger, be freer from diseases while they were little, and lay the foundations of a healthy and strong constitution much surer, if they were not crammed so much as they are, by fond mothers and foolish servants, and were kept wholly from flesh the first three or four years of their lives."