e money spent on tobacco and liquors
could be spent in books and pictures, I predict that nobody's health
would be a whit less sound, and houses would be vastly more
attractive. There is enough money spent in smoking, drinking, and
over-eating to give every family in the community a good library, to
hang everybody's parlor walls with lovely pictures, to set up in every
house a conservatory which should bloom all winter with choice
flowers, to furnish every dwelling with ample bathing and warming
accommodations, even down to the dwellings of the poor; and in the
millennium I believe this is the way things are to be.

"In these times of peril and suffering, if the inquiry arises, How
shall there be retrenchment? I answer, First and foremost, retrench
things needless, doubtful, and positively hurtful, as rum, tobacco,
and all the meerschaums of divers colors that do accompany the same.
Second, retrench all eating not necessary to health and comfort. A
French family would live in luxury on the leavings that are constantly
coming from the tables of those who call themselves in middling
circumstances. There are superstitions of the table that ought to be
broken through. Why must you always have cake in your closet? why need
you feel undone to entertain a guest with no cake on your tea-table?
Do without it a year, and ask yourselves if you or your children, or
any one else, have suffered materially in consequence.

"Why is it imperative that you should have two or three courses at
every meal? Try the experiment of having but one, and that a very good
one, and see if any great amount of suffering ensues. Why must social
intercourse so largely consist in eating? In Paris there is a very
pretty custom. Each family has one evening in the week when it stays
at home and receives friends. Tea, with a little bread and butter and
cake, served in the most informal way, is the only refreshment. The
rooms are full, busy, bright,--everything as easy and joyous as if a
monstrous supper, with piles of jelly and mountains of cake, were
waiting to give the company a nightmare at the close.

"Said a lady, pointing to a gentleman and his wife in a social circle
of this kind, 'I ought to know them well,--I have seen them every week
for twenty years.' It is certainly pleasant and confirmative of social
enjoyment for friends to eat together; but a little enjoyed in this
way answers the purpose as well as a great deal, and better, too."

"Well,