Page:Henry Stephens Salt - A Plea for Vegetarianism and Other Essays.pdf/93

Rh New ; yet it is not now denied that the abolition of slavery marked an advance in moral knowledge. So, too, it will be in the question of Food Reform.

I have now answered What appear to me to be the commonest of our adversaries’ arguments. Would-be Vegetarians are at ﬁrst so often subjected to annoyance and molestation, owing to the kindly anxieties of friends and relatives, and the more ofﬁcious advice of acquaintances, that it is well to be fore-armed in argument. The early career of a Vegetarian is indeed often a veritable “Pilgrim’s Progress.” He meets with no lack of such characters as Mistrust, Timorous, and Ignorance: Mr. Worldly Wiseman. the representative of Society, is always at hand with his plausible remonstrances: even the dreadful Apollyon himself, in the form of the family physician, occasionally bestrides the path of the bold adventurer, with his awful and solemn warning—“Prepare thyself to die.” But if the pilgrim presses boldly on his course, these early obstacles will rapidly vanish from his path ; even as Apollyon, when he felt the thrust of Christian's sword, “spread forth his dragon’s wings and sped him away.”