Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1891-03-27
TEMPERANCE TOPICS.
THERE is DANGER IN HIGHLY
SEASONED FOOD.
1c y,u Are Not a Total Abstainer. Why
No,o-The Faithful Mother Who Waits

IT You Arc Not a Total Abstainer. why
o-Ths Faithful Mother Who Waits
for Her Boys Staggering Footsteps.
Spices and condiments in the seasoning
of food also lead to intemperance IN the
cultivation of an abnormal taste for hot,
smarting substances. They create a
craving for more food than can be dl-
gested. and for liquors as WELL Persons
who do not know how to cook seek to
make their cookery palatabe by using
spices and condiments to hide their de-
fects. Good cookery consists in incrcas-
ing the digestiblity and improving the
palatableness of food. Bad cookery lg-
nores the natural favors of foods and
adds a variety of high seasonings which
render it still more indigestible than the
unskillcd preparations would be With
out them. The more serious reason
why high seasonings should lead to in
temperance is in the perversion OF the
sense of taste. Certain senses are given
to us to add to our pleasure as we'll as
for the practical use they are to us. For
instance, the sense of sight is not only
useful but enables us to drink in beauty
without doing us any harm. The same
of music and other harmonies which may
come to us through the sense of hearing.
But the sense of taste was given to dis
tinguish between wholesome and I'M
wholesome foods, and cannot be used for
merely sensuous qualification without
debasement and making it a gross thing
An education which demands enjoyment
or pleasure through the sense of taste is
wholly artifcial; it is coming down to
the animal plane or below it, for the in
stinct of the brute creation teaches it
merely to eat to live.
How widespread is this habit of sensu-
Gus qualification through taste. We
call upon neighbor and are offered re-
freshments, as though the greatest bless
ings of life came from INDUCING the ap-
petite. This evil is largely due to wrong
education, which begins in childhood.
When Johnnie sits down to the table,
the mother says: "Johnnie, what would
you like?" instead of putting plain,
wholesome food before him, expecting
him to eat it and be satisfied. 1t sets the
child to thinking that he must have
what he likes, whether it is good for him
or not. 1t is not strange that an appe-
tite pampered in this way in childhood
becomes uncomfortable at maturity, and
the step from gormandizing to intoXi-
cants is much shorter than most people
imagine The natural, unperVerted
taste of child will lead him to eat that
which is good for him. But how can VIC
expect the children to reform when the
parents continually set them such bad
examples in the matter of eating anc
drinking?
The cultivation of taste for spices i!
degradation of the sense of taste
Nature never designed that pleasure
should be divorced from use. The eff
fects of gratifying the sense of taste
differ materially from those of crafty
ing the higher senses like sight ant
hearing. What we see is gone, and tn
same is true of the sweetest sound
which may reach us through the ear
But what we taste is swallowed into tn.
stomach, and what has thus given u
brief pleasure through the qualification
of the palate must make work in tn
alimentary canal for fourteen hours be
fore it is finally disposed of-Won,aa,'
Mems