Hints for the table: or, the economy of good living / [Anon].

  • John Timbs
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hints for the table: or, the economy of good living / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    wlio is every clay requested to perform a miracle—namely, to reconcile health with intemperance. The City has always been the province for satire; and the wits of king Charles’s time jested upon nothing else during his whole reign.—Addison. Laughter is one of the greatest helps to digestion; and the custom prevalent among our forefathers, of exciting it at table by jesters and buffoons, was founded on true medi- cal principles. In a word, endeavour to have cheerful and merry companions at your meals: what nourishment one receives amidst mirth and jollity will certainly produce good and light blood. — Hufeland's Art of Prolonging Life. “ Some people,” observes Dr. Johnson, “ have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind any thing else.” The following extractfrom Le Physiologic de Gout, on the pleasures of the table, may serve to dissipate some portion of the existing prejudice against gourmets, whose high vocation is too frequently confounded with gluttony and greediness: “ The pleasure of eating is common to us animals; it merely supposes hunger, and that which is necessary to satisfy it. The pleasure of the table is peculiar to the human species; it supposes antecedent attention to the preparation of the repast, to the choice of the place, and theassembling of the guests. Thepleasureof eating requires, if not hunger, at least, appetite ; the pleasure of the table is most frequently independent of both.” Those unfortunate persons to whom nature has refused an aptitude for the enjoyments of taste, have long faces, long noses, and large eyes : whatever is their height, they have always in their tournure a character of elongation. They have black and straight hair, and above all are defi- cient in embonpoint: it is they who invented trousers. The women whom nature has afflicted with the same misfortune
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