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76 whenever it’s mentioned. They’ll do even more for temperance than they will for reformed diet, though goodness knows they’re fond enough of drinking. The Edenites number about sixty-seven in this city, and nine is the largest number of gentlemen that we’ve been able to interest. Those nine are the husbands and sons of the lady members, and at the next meeting two of them are going to be expelled for backsliding. I declare, if I was a man, I’d be ashamed to confess that I was all stomach; but that’s what most of them are. Not that it’s easy work to be an Edenite: it’s impossible to any but a highly spiritual nature. I have been on the diet for six months, and nothing but my position as vice-president of the society, and my desire to crush the body and release the spirit, could have kept me faithful. I don’t pretend to like it, but that doesn’t make me disloyal. There’s nothing I enjoy better than a good cut of underdone beef, with plenty of dish gravy; I love nice tender porterhouse steaks with mushrooms; I love thick mutton-chops broiled over a hot fire: but I can’t believe in them, and my conscience won’t allow me to eat them. Do you believe in meat?"