r centuries; those, moreover, who preached to them about
the enormity of eating meat, were an unattractive academic folk, and
though they over-awed all but the bolder youths, there were few who did
not in their hearts dislike them. However much the young person might be
shielded, he soon got to know that men and women of the world--often far
nicer people than the prophets who preached abstention--continually spoke
sneeringly of the new doctrinaire laws, and were believed to set them
aside in secret, though they dared not do so openly. Small wonder, then,
that the more human among the student classes were provoked by the touch-
not, taste-not, handle-not precepts of their rulers, into questioning
much that they would otherwise have unhesitatingly accepted.

One sad story is on record about a young man of promising amiable
disposition, but cursed with more conscience than brains, who had been
told by his doctor (for as I have above said disease was not yet held to
be criminal) that he ought to eat meat, law or no law. He was much
shocked and for some time refused to comply with what he deemed the
unrighteous advice given him by his doctor; at last, however, finding
that he grew weaker and weaker, he stole secretly on a dark night into
one of those dens in which meat was surreptitiously sold, and bought a
pound of prime steak. He took it home, cooked it in his bedroom when
every one in the house had gone to rest, ate it, and though he could
hardly sleep for remorse and shame, felt so much better next morning that
he hardly knew himself.

Three or four days later, he again found himself irresistibly drawn to
this same den. Again he bought a pound of steak, again he cooked and ate
it, and again, in spite of much mental torture, on the following morning
felt himself a different man. To cut the story short, though he never
went beyond the bounds of moderation, it preyed upon his mind that he
should be drifting, as he certainly was, into the ranks of the habitual
law-breakers.

All the time his health kept on improving, and though he felt sure that
he owed this to the beefsteaks, the better he became in body, the more
his conscience gave him no rest; two voices were for ever ringing in his
ears--the one saying, "I am Common Sense and Nature; heed me, and I will
reward you as I rewarded your fathers before you." But the other voice
said: "Let not that plausible spirit lure you to your ruin. I am Duty;
heed me, and I wi