from the table. Nor was his delineation overwrought. I have my self seen just such spectacles hundreds of times at public tables.

At home, at his own table, the Anglo-American is not much more moderate in eating. The mouth is crowded with food, and successively washed down with tea, coffee, or some other liquid. Now it is the duty of the physiological writer to admonish the reader of the effects of this habit, and if, after knowing the consequences, it is still persisted in, no one will be in fault but the sufferer, if the worst form of dyspepsia is the result.

Fig. 49.

THE SALIVARY GLANDS.

1, Parotid gland; 2, its ducts; 3, Submaxillary gland; 4, its ducts; 5, Sublingual gland.

The thorough lubrication of the food with saliva is necessary to promote good digestion. Saliva is an alkali, and electrically speaking, a negative, while the gastric fluid in the stomach is an acid and a positive. When, therefore, food descends into the stomach, only half masticated, and lubricated with some other fluid than saliva, digestion for some time is almost suspended, because the negative fluid is wanting to attract the immediate action of the positive fluid, and the presence of other liquids tends to dilute and destroy the power of the latter. In addition to this, the labor of the jaws and

teeth is thrown upon the disabled stomach. How surely, then, must the electrical or nervous machinery of the digestive apparatus be disturbed. Then, again, food in the stomach, unless at once acted upon by the gastric fluid, commences a process of decomposition and fermentation, by which means the blood also becomes involved in the pernicious results which follow. If a person eats slowly, masticates thoroughly, and omits all drinks, nature furnishes three or four ounces of salival fluid with which to moisten his food, preparatory to its entrance into the stomach. No one requires liquids to drink at the table. This habit is the result of fast eating. The salivary glands cannot furnish lubricating fluids fast enough for the rapid eater, so he depends on artificial liquids, which dilute what little saliva is used as well as the gastric juices. Liquids should never be swallowed till after eating, and then not to the extent that they are usually. Eat slowly, and depend only on the fluid nature furnishes to moisten your food.

Still another habit-not, however, peculiar to our fast-living Americans is that of stuffing the stomach with hearty food on various holiday occasions, when the system does not at all require it. A grand reception is to be given to a live prince, a president, a diplo inat, a governor, a general, a congressman, or to one of our ever overfed aldermen. A "big dinner" is gotten up, regardless of expense, and at about twelve o'clock, midnight, all sorts of game, turtle soup, turkey, roast beef, roast pig, lobster salad, and a thousand other things dignified with French names, and well wet down with champagne, etc., etc., are served to a crowd of red-faced gentlemen, whose vascular fluids are already engorged with red corpuscles and with inflammatory properties by over-eating, done on many a previous occasion. And these big dinners are carried home to the bedchamber to fill the mangers of night-mares, and feast the hobgoblins of the night which perch upon the bed-posts, and make the sleeper jump from his disturbed rest whenever the sensitive nerves of the brain are pressed and fired by the inflammatory blood. It is surprising that this gluttony--this making a sewer of the mouth and the esophagus-this midnight bedaubing of besotted lips, has not made mankind ashamed of the mouth and digestive apparatus, as masturbation and sexual pollution have made them ashamed of the sexual organs, which were created by God mainly for reproduction,

as eating was instituted chiefly for the purpose of supporting life. I have read of a people, somewhere, who are ashamed to eat in public; every one seeks solitude while partaking of food; and it may be a debauched ancestry led to this peculiar custom.

On thanksgiving day, Christmas, and various other holidays, families get together and abuse their stomachs. Nearly everybody, at such times, eats too much, and does it wilfully; and some eat and drink things on such occasions that are so hurtful to them, that they do not think of touching them at any other time. Now, why eat any more on these days than on any other? Associate together if you Fig. 50.

choose have a good dinner-have some dishes you

cannot afford to have every day-let your table literally groan under the load of good things; but why so completely shift the burden as to groan yourselves? Let the table continue to bear the burden,

while you bear away from it no more than you can comfortably carry. As to public dinners, and all meals prepared simply for entertainment, why would it not be better to cover the tables with light, delicious food? How beautifull they would look on such occasions, provided with rustic arbors, entwined by artificial vines, and loaded with real grapes; with baskets of apples here, and oranges there, interspersed with bouquets of natural flowers, filling the room with their delicious fragrance; gotten up, in brief, with a material and taste one meets with at a horticultural fair! How do you suppose the atmosphere of such a feast would seem to a well-fed man, compared with that which is loaded with the fumes of onions, and the odor of scorched animal fats? And, if people are not hungry, but eat simply to be sociable, why not nibble grapes, apples, and other wholesome fruits which are light, and easy to digest, whilst toasting and chatting, instead of cramming the stomach at midnight with

food only suitable at seasonable hours for that of a man who follows the plough, or bends over the anvil? The prevalent practices of banqueting, not only injure the stomach, induce disease, and abbreviate life, but they make wise men talk silly. This nation had a President who filled every office of honor, from that of a mayor of a small city, to the highest place in the gift of the people; but banquets and feasts made this great man talk like the habitué of a common oystercellar! A man of distinction certainly requires a peculiarly organized brain, an enormous stomach, and a discreet tongue, to accept and endure proffered honors.

Would it not be better-incomparably better-to never partake of solid, hearty food to a greater extent than is necessary to support life and health, and on all public and festive occasions, when it is proposed to have a "feast of reason and flow of soul," to cover ti. tables with fruits rather than cooked animals? The demands of the social circle are very different from those of hunger.

"Habit is second nature." So says the proverbialist. How important then it is that we should form such habits as will tend to develop physical health and mental vigor, instead of physical decay and mental imbecility. Habit is not acquired in a day—seldom in a year. It creeps upon an individual gradually, and if its effects are disastrous to health and longevity, so imperceptible are the changes it produces in the system from day to day, the victim is seldom aware of the cause of a disease which is developed by it.

Experiment has demonstrated that a man may endure, without pain, the heat of an oven hot enough for baking purposes, if he be placed there while the oven is cool, and the heat is slowly raised to the baking point. But does any one believe that a person kept in such a temperature, however comfortable it may become to him, will live as long as if he were surrounded with a temperate atmospheric element? Dr. Kane, and his gallant band of Arctic navigators, became so habituated to a cold temperature, that they could walk themselves into a comfortable perspiration with the thermometer at forty-two degrees below zero, or seventy-four degrees below the freezing point! But their enterprising adventure made sad inroads upon their physical organizations, and the brave commander of the American Polar Expedition, with several of his heroic companions, have since paid the forfeit with their lives. Thus we see the flexibility of

the human body to conform to whatever conditions we force upon it, and we also perceive how fatal to longevity are all deviations from the injunctions of first nature. We may change our natural habits of eating, drinking, sleeping, etc., to some others acquired, as easily as we can accustom our systems to extreme temperatures, and experience no immediate discomfort; but first nature will some time demand a settlement, and second nature will turn bankrupt, throwing the loss upon his superior.

Those who strive to save the souls of men counsel all to take a daily retrospect of their conduct, to see if they have violated any moral law. I would also advise a daily retrospect to ascertain if any physical law has been disregarded; for how can the immortal spirit maintain purity and complacency in a corrupt tabernacle? It is also the duty of the Christian mother to watch over the physical as well as moral tendencies of her children, and to train them into habits which will conduce to a healthy corporeal and mental development.

Fig. 51.

Sexual Starvation.

Some of my readers who have given little or no attention to the subject of animal magnetism, personal magnetism, individual electricity, etc., as it is variously denominated, will be startled at the above heading, in the chapter giving some of the principal causes of blood and nervous derangements. Especially, will coarsely made, blustering men, who never deny themselves any indulgence of appetite or passion, and frigid, unsympathetic women, who could live in the Arctic seas on an isolated cake of floating ice, turn up their noses at this new bubble of sickly sentimentality. There are two classes, however, of both sexes, who will instinctively comprehend the subject under consideration before reading any thing more than the caption. One is composed of girls and boys, and women and men, who possess fine sympathetic organizations, easily affected by atmospheric changes, or by social or domestic discord, and whose condition in life has been such as to cause them to live more or less

THE ISOLATED GIRL