The Washington bee. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1884-1922, 1893-02-25
EATING AND LIVING.
ABsTEMloUs HABITS ARE FAVOR
ABLE TO OLD AGE.

Great Men of the Eighteenth Century
Were Careful of Their Diet.
A correspondent of the London Truth
says: The persons living to green
old age, who have come within the
range of my observation, were abste-
mious themselves, and had either
sprung from poor families or came
from the South, where heavy meats are
not enjoyable. Guizot. who was not a
vigorous trencherman, started in pow
erty and was a southerner. Theirs
started in the same condition. ate twice
a day and very heartily, but was so
heavy after eating as to be obliged to
go to sleep. He died of apoplexy after
eating. / attribute the extraord nary
difference in quality in the early and
late works of Victor Hugo to his hav-
ing only scant meals when he wrote the
former, and to his having plentiful and
delicious ones 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
ridiculous when digesting either repast.
Volumes have been written against
drunkenness. But any doctor who un-
derstands we'll the human frame will
tell you (if he can cast aside hnmbug)
that drink is not as bad in its effects IT'S
gormandizing. Nothing so hastens
senilitY as the latter.
The czar, his brothers, and his uncles
are all gormandizers, and what heavy,
wearie? lot they all look, unwieldy as
megaGheriums, and about as intelligent.
l have never doubted since [ began to
tnink upon the subject that George Ill
ate himself into the mad doctors hands,
aud Louis XVI into semi -imbecility.
Who were the great vicors of the
eighteenth century s? Voltaire, who
lived on coffee and had too weak a
stomach to bear much food Washing
ton, 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 a crust of
bread, mouthful of meat when he can
get it and cup of tea. The Scotch
were proverbially hungry people when
they turned India into a British de-
pendency.
[ have been discussing the dinner
question with Jew, aged eighty, who
is an enthusiastic Mosaist. He him
self ate the cache enragee until he was
tive-and-twenty, and thinks it was the
making of him. The reason he 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. It is
first bled, and then stepped in salt and
water until no redness stains the water.
This units it for the spit OF the grill,
and does not make it toothsome in
stew-the only way in which it can be
done. unless boiled. Meat thus pre-
pared has no SAVIOR. and does not tempt
bic Jew to eat it gluttononsly: Dying
since every one must die of something.
But, as my aged Hebrew friend OBJ
serves, If does matter to be for years in
state that ends in apoplexy-to- wit,
with starved brain. The brain starves
in the midst of too great plenty, be-
cause gormandizing clogs the capillary
arteries which bring life to the brain
substance. The blood does it's best to
do its work, and in it's efforts at last
bursts vessel.
l once knew an impressario who was
also Jew. He was behind any num-
Der OF lyrical theatres, from Stockholm
to Sydney, cafes concerts, music halls.
and other places where singing was the
attraction. He held carniyorous feed
ing in horror, 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-those of Naples and
Genoa-have often among them sweet
singers. The most meat citing part of
Great Britain-England-is also a
voiceless country. Though the singing
is SO fearful in the Scotch kirks my
friend found some divine songsters
south of the Grampians, and greater
number in the Highlands. He often
heard common Irishwomen ''liit" and
sing like nightingales, but never in the
town. Sweden was country of song,
because a 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 carnlvorous one can ever sing a
song. 1t croaks, has bad liver, and
is generally melancholy.
Masks