Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/481

Rh or six. It all depends on training, and in no other respect is the human system so plastic to the influence of habit. The Rev. Mr. Moffat tells us that the Gonaque Hottentots are noways incommoded by a five days' fast, and get old on an average of four meals a week. The Greeks and Romans during the prime of their republics contented themselves with one meal a day; Claude Bernard recommends two, but his countrymen generally eat three; their German neighbors four; the East-Germans even five: breakfast, second breakfast (zweites Frühstück), dinner, Vesperbrot, and supper, to which supper the Vienna burghers actually superadd a Nacht-bissel—a "night-lunch," of cold potato-salad with bread and Wurst, and often with a mug of beer—"for the stomach's sake"! I get along comfortably with a meal and a half; so does my grand-uncle, an octogenarian, who still masticates his bread with a full set of unbought teeth. Two, or one and two halves, should be enough for any man. The lightest breakfast is the best—buckwheat-cakes with a little honey or apple-butter, and a glass of milk, or a cup of chocolate, if you must take "something warm." Chocolate possesses nutritive properties, which tea and coffee per se are totally devoid of. I never use it, but I believe it is non-stimulating. Or chew a crust of stale bread, the best dentifrice and a useful absorbent, good for acidity of the stomach. At noon take a glass of milk and a couple of biscuits, or in summer a couple of ripe pears or peaches; they will keep you cool during the post-meridian heat and do you more good than a cocktail lunch, Never keep a pocket-flask. Don't stay with flagons; better comfort with apples, if you can not wait till five. School-children should pass their recess on the playground. A biscuit and a pocketful of apples will satisfy the temporary demands of the stomach; and, if they have munched up their comestibles in the course of the morning, as boys are apt to do, they will find it far easier to forego their noonday lunch altogether than to resist the insidious somnolence which would dull their wits after a regular dinner, and often makes the afternoon lesson a protracted struggle between nature and duty.

But at the principal meal they should eat their fill. Let them pitch in, without fear of dangerous consequences—unless your landlord charges by the plateful. Children, like monkeys, have a way of dallying with their food if they are full—picking a crumb here and there, or mumbling their apples without using their teeth. Make them get up if you notice such symptoms, or, better, entice them away by improvising some out-door or up-stairs amusement. But I repeat, never press them to eat—for principle's sake—not even your young visitors; they are not likely to go to bed hungry if your menu comprises such items as baked apples or bread-pudding and sweet milk.

Jean Jacques Rousseau holds that intemperate habits are mostly acquired in early boyhood, when blind deference to social precedents is apt to overcome our natural antipathies, and that those who have