Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/845

Rh both. And where the question is not one of virtue, but of sheer fancy or gratification of the appetite, even he who can afford to indulge those delights will be wise to make a choice. At the time I speak of there was not much smoking. Cigars were not much in fashion; the pestilent heresy of the cigarette was not yet dreamed of; the sober pipe was mostly used, generally in that form known as a "long clay," and taken sedately after work was over, as a wholesome aid to reflection. No doubt there were exceptions, men who fuddled themselves over pipes and spirits, or beer; but broadly speaking the use of tobacco then was the exception rather than the rule, certainly among the upper classes of society, and both stomach and brain were thus better able to support the tax laid upon them.

The whole duty of man in this matter lies, as the wise Greeks saw it lay in all matters, in moderation. It is hard to believe that if a man be in a healthy state he need seriously vex his soul on the quantity of starch in his potato, or the relative proportions of hydro-carbons or carbo-hydrates necessary to a perfect diet. If he finds boiled meat more to his taste than roast, white more than brown, if whisky suit him better than brandy, or wine better than either, I can not think it necessary that he should go about very painfully to divorce himself from his liking. And if he finds water most palatable of all beverages, in Pindar's name let him gratify his taste, if he can do so in safety from those numerous and nameless diseases that we are told lurk in the pure element. Let him only be moderate in all things—in water as in the rest, for I take it, to swallow inordinate quantities of water, cold, or after the latest fashion, hot, can be no more wholesome to the human stomach than excessive doses of a stronger drink.

I am thinking of those whose habits must be chiefly sedentary, of those who have to work for their livelihood, to earn it by the perpetual exercise of their brain. And in our time, when once the golden term of youth is passed, these men form by far the most part of the community; men to whom the power of work is life itself—happy are they if it mean only their own life—and who must watch that power as jealously as ever fabled miser watched his gold. What they should eat and drink, and whether they should smoke, sure am I that they, and only they, can decide. Probably they will find that a fixed, unswerving rule is not the best, but that, as Bacon says, "The great precept of health and lasting is that a man do vary and interchange contraries." For myself I find that when living—existing rather, I would say—in London, a stimulating diet is more necessary than when I work in the fresh air and quiet of the country. A moderate amount of wine seems to me needful to balance the impure atmosphere of our great Babylon, to keep body and mind to the mark, jaded as they are by the unending din and bustle of human life. But the fresh breezes, the spacious air, the sunlight, all the beauty and the rest of the