Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/163

Rh him to indulge in a body and soul destroying poison, but that appetite has been artificially and painfully acquired, and in spite of the earnest protests of Nature, which teach a child by the unmistakable testimony of its senses that alcohol and all fermented drinks are disgusting, and consequently injurious. But cold water, cold sweet milk, lemonade, and cider fresh from the press, are agreeable to every undepravedundeprived [sic] palate, and of these and similar beverages we might drink our fill on the hottest day, without any fear of having to repent the gratification of a natural appetite. Persons, like Baron Brisse, who frankly admit that their only object in life is to diminish its tedium, act at least consistently if they adopt the most effectual means to shorten its duration, but housekeepers who, from motives of economy, grudge their children a handful of apples or an excursion to a shady picnic-ground, should not boast of their annual savings before they have deducted the doctor's bill.

To take plenty of rest after meals is another health rule which we might adopt on the authority of our instinct-guided fellow-creatures, if not of our sensible ancestors, who surpassed us in physical vigor and hygienic insight as much as we exceed them in mechanical or astronomical knowledge. In obedience to an urgent instinct, wild animals retire to their hiding-places after a hearty feed, and digest in peace; and the ancient Greeks, as well as the Romans of the ante-Cæsarean era, contented themselves with one daily meal, which they ate leisurely in the cool of the afternoon after completing their day's work. The rest of the evening they devoted to music, conversation, dances, and light gymnastics, and had thus all night, besides the larger part of the following day, for digestion, could assimilate their food, and probably derived more enjoyment from that one meal than we do from our hurried dinners, late suppers, luncheons, and "Christian breakfasts"—true déjeuners dinatoires, that dull our brains and limbs during the first three or four post-prandial business-hours.

For a quarter of a year, at least, we might get along with two daily meals, one at noon, after finishing the larger and harder half of our day's work, on an "empty stomach" (which custom would soon make a resigned and very comfortable stomach), then a siesta of three or four hours; work till sunset, and then a bath, followed by a leisurely symposium and such domestic amusements as our tastes and opportunities might suggest; and since it is probably true that sleep should not follow too close upon a large meal, we might prolong our amusements or dolce far nientes through the first third of the night, on Saturdays even till after midnight, without fear of thereby violating any law of Nature. The habits of our next relations among the children of the wilderness, the mammals, and vertebrate reptiles, become semi-nocturnal during the warm season: deer, buffaloes, antelopes, and kangaroos, graze in moonshine; bears and foxes leave their dens after dark and rest through the warmer part of the day; alligators wander about