The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1885-12-22
A eAsrRoNomlc eRowLga
Thinks We Need n Kitchen RefOrm-The
American Eater and His Dyspepsia

boston Budgetl
Eating is not particularly aesthetic, but
it is a tri.daily acknowledgment to our
selves and others of our mortal feebleneSS
Were not the practice of eating general, it
would be held a disgraceful yielding. and
we should feed shyly, with a shame at
being seen, like that of munching lunch
seated on a curbstone. What a piece of
work is man. how noble in reasonl how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving,
how express and admirable! in action,
how like an angel! in apprehension, how
like god the beauty of the world the
paragon Of animals" ct thrice day
this paragon and godlike animal indulges
in apprehension of quite another sort,
for it is feeding time, and there is
snarling and swapping and tleshy wag-
ging of Jaws till the machine which is
within us is resupplied with fuel. People
confess this weakness to each other and
rush in herds to satisfy it, as though
singly it were an abasement
Is it because eating is ungraceful that it
is so little honored? A lady looks least
like an angel at the dinner table; is that
the reason she loves the kitchen so little?
Is it for such reason, or by an inherent
vice in national character. that the repre-
sentative American is sallow. lean, loose
jointed man, who began life with good
constitution, which he treated as if he had
a grudge against it, who every day steps
over mountains in his path, and at 80
finds out, for the first time, that he has
an "infernal" stomach, thereupon going
into the doctors hands and afterwards
eating food from one hand and pills from
the other?
In the New World type nature ven
tured upon an experiment, and put IN one
more drop.of nervous fluid; but the Amer
lean treats the drop as if it were stamina
and not impulse boiler and not pressure
So we are old at 80 We have not time
for dinner s ap9ga he Iasty jerk as TO dogs
making them snap it in the same hasty
way We all carry weight in our own
bodies, and live and work in spite of them
they are the impedimentS of the marches
of our lives. And we are all dyspeptic-
a word that suggests the spectacles.
Dyspe psia is not nervousness. or we
might owe something to it in literature
it is far unlike that depression under
which De Quincy pitifully says, com
position of any sort was ineXpressibly
painful burden which became public
gain. Dyspepsia would have crushed
Cromwell and deferred the fall of Charles.
Minerva springing from Jove's head, that
preternatUTal antic, may have been but
an unGigested morsel under the imperial
girdIe. Dyspepsia is author of many a
doubt and gloomy doctrine in theology;
it may have been the devil that vexed
Luther and the saints 1t has lost
battles. 1t has strangled ideas.
We need kitchen reform, and the es-
Enlistment of classes in which not ouly
young women can be taught how to cook
but young ladies qualified to superintend
the culinary departments of their future
households 1t is time we realized that
nothing useful is vulgar or undignifed.
If cooking is vulgar, SO is eating; and let
us dispense with both or make both OBJ
iects of study 1t is no materialism to
say that the food we eat is the thoughts
we think, the doctrines we hold to, the
experiences we treasure or try to forget,
our successes or failures What we con
sumo becomes ourselves, and life is seen
by every man through the medium of his
physical being and condition.