ed
vegetable. They confine a child, poor creature, to this miserable fare;
permitting, in due season, only a pittance of the ripest fruit.

They would give children, while they are growing, oatmeal and milk for
breakfast, made into a porridge. They would deny them beer. You know how
strengthening that is, and yet these people say that there is not an ounce
of meat in a whole bucketful. They would deny them comfits, cakes, wine,
pastry, and grudge them nuts; but our boys shall rebel against all this.
We will teach them to regard cake as bliss, and wine as glory; we will
educate them to a love of tarts. Once let our art secure over the stomach
its ascendency, and the civilized organ acquires new desires. Vitiated
cravings, let the sanitary doctors call them; let them say that children
will eat garbage, as young women will eat chalk and coals, not because it
is their nature so to do, but because it is a symptom of disordered
function. We know nothing about function. Art against Appetite has won the
day, and the pale face of civilization is established.

Plain sugar, it is a good thing to forbid our children; there is something
healthy in their love of it. Suppose we tell them that it spoils the
teeth. They know no better; we do. We know that the negroes, who in a
great measure live upon sugar, are quite famous for their sound white
teeth; and Mr. Richardson tells us of tribes among the Arabs of Sahara,
whose beautiful teeth he lauds, that they are in the habit of keeping
about them a stick of sugar in a leathern case, which they bring out from
time to time for a suck, as we bring out the snuff-box for a pinch. But we
will tell our children that plain sugar spoils the teeth; sugar mixed with
chalk or verdigris, or any other mess--that is to say, civilized sugar--they
are welcome to.

And for ourselves, we will eat any thing. The more our cooks, with spice,
with druggery and pastry, raise our wonder up, the more we will approve
their handicraft. We will excite the stomach with a peppered soup; we will
make fish indigestible with melted butter, and correct the butter with
cayenne. We will take sauces, we will drink wine, we will drink beer, we
will eat pie-crust, we will eat indescribable productions--we will take
celery, and cheese, and ale--we will take liqueur--we will take wine and
olives and more wine, and oranges and almonds, and any thing else that may
present itself, and we will call all that our dinner, and for such