Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1890-12-11


after eating, as to be obliged to 90 to
sleep. He died of apoplexy after eating.
| attribute the extraordinary difference In
quality in the early and late work of Victor
Hugo, to his having only scant meals when
he wrote the former, and to his having
plentiful and delicious ones, to which he
dld the fullest justice, when he turned out
the latter. Victor Hugo was spirituel be-
fore lunch or dinner; he was inflated in
speech and bereft of all sense of the ridicu-
lous when digesting either repast. NJ. de
Lesseps is almost Oriental in his abstcmi-
business at table, he being of a southern
family, and having lived long in hot
countries, which are as healthy as any to
those who adapt themselves to the climate.
| dare say he owes his longevity and high
spirits to his sobriety in food as we'll as in
drink. Volumes nave been written against
drunkenness. But any doctor who under
stands we'll the human frame will tell you
If he can cast aside humbug) that drink is
not as bad in its effect as gormandizing.
Nothing so hastens seniIity as the latter.
Borthelemy Saint Aiaire, though eighty
four, works as hard and with IS little
fatigue as he ever did in his life Twenty
years ago he said to me; Il am persuaded
that the civilized man eats three times
more than what he needs when he is not
checked by poverty. For my part | was
too poor until was elderly to be COR
| mand, and when | now 90 to dine at a
friends house | only play with my knife
and fork. Dinner Is a mistake The
car, his brothers, and uncles, are all gor-
mandizers and what a heavy, wearied lot
they all look, unwieldy as mes atheriuns,
and about as intelligent. | have never
doubted, since began to think upon the
subject, that George III. ate himself into
the mad doctors hand, and Louis XVI in
to semimbeciEty. Who were the great
victors of the eighteenth century? Vol
taire, who lived on coffee and had too
weak stomach to bear food; Washington,
who was spare and abstemious; and at the
revolution, the people of Paris. who were
starvelings. Stanley greatly explains his
success when he says that all he wants is u
crust of bread a mouthful of meat when he
were proverbially hungry people when
they turned India into a British depen-
dency.
l have been discussing the dinner ques-
ton with Jew, aged eighty, who is an
enthusiastic Mosaist. He himself ate the
vache enragee until he was fve-and-twenty,
and thinks it was the making of him. The
reason ne gave why his brethren bear so
we'll all climates is that they spoil their
meat when they prepare it according to the
prescriptions of their religion. 1t is first
bled, and then stepped in salt and water
| until no redness stains the water. This
units it for the spit or the grill, and does
not make 1t toothsome In stew--the only
way In which it can be done, unless boiled.
| Meat thus prepared has no SAVIOR, and does
not tempt the Jew to eat of it gluttOnously.
| Dying CT apopleXy does not much matter,
/ since everyone must die of something
But, as my aged Hebrew friend observes, il
does matter to be for Years in a state that
ends in apoplexy-to wit, with a starved
brain. The brain starves in the midst of
too great plenty, because commanding
| clogs the capillary arteries which bring life
to the brain substance The blood does its
| best to do its work, and its efforts at last
burst vessel. once knew an impresserio,
who was also Jew. He was behind any
number of lyrical theatres, from Stockholm
to Sydney, safec-conCerts, music hall, and
other places where singing was the attrac-
ton. He held carnivorous feeding in hor-
ror, and told me that he never lost his time
seeking for fine voices in countries where
fish Or a meat diet prevailed. The most
fish eating Italians of Naples and
| Genoa-having not often among them
sweet singers. The most meat-eating
part of Great Britain EngIand-is also a
voiceless country. Though the singing IS
so fearful in the Scotch kinks, my friend
found some divine songsters south of the
Grampians, and a greater number in the
| Highlands. He often heard common Irish
women ''lit'' and sing like nightingales,
but never in the towns. Sweden was a
country of song, because d country of grain.
Norway was not Too much fish was eaten
there. Vocal capacity disappeared In
musical families who got rich. They ate
too much meat The vocal birds are eaters
of grain, fruit and vegetables. No carniv-
orous one could ever sing song. 1t
croaks, has bad liver, and is generally
melancholy.