sensuality? why will men so seldom confess, and even then but
reluctantly, the pleasure they take in eating and drinking?"

"Because," said counsellor Helbach, "they never know what they are
really at. It has always struck me as very remarkable and singular
that, in the little round box in which all our finer senses are ranged
and stored up, and in the top of which moreover our thinking powers,
and all the noblest intellectual products of our soul are deposited,
we should find that red-lined drawer close beneath, with the delicate
little bosses set like jewels over the tremulous vocal tongue and
palate, garnisht in front with teeth that toil and cut, and closed by
the graceful mouth. Eating is only another mode of thinking. Thus this
box is a coppel in which the essences of all created things, the
finest and the grossest, vapours and juices, the soft soothing oils,
the bitternesses and tartnesses which at first seem grating, the
flavour which evaporates in a momentary enjoyment, are put to the
test. First the teeth begin chopping and grinding; the tongue, at
other times so talkative, silently and busily rolls about and makes
much of the morsels it receives, presses them affectionately and
benevolently against the palate, to double its pleasure by sharing it;
and when this tender dalliance has been sufficiently indulged in, at
length pushes them back almost unwillingly to its friend that swallows
them down, and that indeed has the real enjoyment of them, the highest
of all, though but for a moment, and then with heroic self-sacrifice
makes them over to another power. Straightway the same game is
repeated a second, a third, a thousandth time. I never yet heard it
said that any self-tormenting anchoret had courage enough altogether
to forgo the pleasure of eating, even though he stinted himself to
bread. Indeed kind Nature has taken such good care of her children,
that it is next to impossible."

"A very just and profound remark!" exclaimed his neighbour.

"We see too," continued the dissertator, "what high importance nature
has attacht to these processes of devouring, eating, chewing, and
swallowing, and how in every sphere of existence they have been her
main end and aim. What would become of all the animals upon the earth,
of all the birds that roam through the air, and all the swarms of
greater and lesser creatures that people the waters and the sea,
unless every one of them had received a bill, payable at sight, up