it
possibly could be, when she would leisurely sit down at a table and eat
the whole of it.

Did it make her sick?--you will ask. It did, indeed, and she expected it
would. She would go immediately to bed, as soon as the huge bolus was
swallowed, and lie there a day or two, perhaps two or three days.
Occasionally such a surfeit cost her the confinement of a whole week.

It is truly surprising that any Christian woman should thus make a beast
of herself, for the sake of the momentary indulgence of the appetite;
but so it is. I have met with a few such. Happily, however, conduct so
low and bestial is not so frequent among females as males, though quite
too frequent among the former so long as a single case is found, which
could be prevented by reasoning or even by authority.

There is one thing concerning butter which deserves notice, and which it
may not be amiss to mention in this place. What we call butter, in this
country,--what is used, I mean, at our tables,--is properly pickled or
salted butter. Now, I suppose it is pretty well understood, that in some
of the countries of Europe no such thing as salted or pickled butter is
used or known. They make use of milk, cream, and a little fresh butter;
but that is all. In the kingdom of Brazil, among the native population,
at least, no such thing as butter, in any shape, has ever yet been
known.

Fresh butter is sufficiently difficult of digestion; but salted butter
is much more so; and this is the main point to which I wish to call your
attention. Why, what is our object in salting down butter? Is it not to
prevent change? Would it not otherwise soon become acid and
disagreeable? And does not salting it so harden or toughen it, or, as it
were, fix it, that it will resist the natural tendency to decomposition
or putrefaction?

But will not this same "fixation," so to call it, prepare it to resist
changes within the stomach as well as outside of it; or, in other words,
prevent, in a measure, the work of digestion? Most unquestionably it
will. And herein is the stronghold of objection to this article. Hence,
too, the reason why it causes eruptions on the skin. The irritation
begins on the lining membrane of the stomach. The latter is first coated
with eruption; and, after a time, by what is called sympathy, the same
tendency is manifested in the face.

These things ought to be well understood. There is great ignorance on
this subject, and what is known is generally the