have sufficient, there is no real difference in the
satisfaction we derive from these indulgences.
My meal may be composed of the so-called
"delicacies of the season," while yours may be
simply a steak and potatoes. When we have
both laid down our knives and forks, and cried
"enough," the sensation is the same in both
cases. If you hanker after my delicacies, you
own to a desire simply to give your palate a
passing gratification. Your food is really more
wholesome and nourishing than mine, and if you
were content, you would enjoy it quite as much.
The real fact is, that these "delicacies of the
season" are invented and concocted for me, not
because they are good for me, or because there
is any great amount of enjoyment in the
consumption of them, but because I have a vast
deal of mbney to throw away. I merely
conform to a fashion in ordering and paying for
them.

I began with salmon, for instance. You think
you would like to have salmon every day for
dinner. Try it three times running. Why, in the
old days, before railways established a ready and
rapid communication with the London markets,
the servants of country gentlemen residing on
the banks of the Severn, the Tay, the Dee, and
the Spey, made a stipulation in their terms of
engagement that they were not to be fed upon
salmon more than three times a week. Pheasant
and partridge are delicacies of the season; but
always to dine on pheasant and partridge would
be less tolerable than perpetual bread and water.
There is nothing for which a man should be more
thankful than an ever-recurring appetite for
plain beef and mutton—nothing except the
means of indulging that appetite. Those highly
spiced dishes, called by fine French names,
which are set upon the tables of the rich and
great, are mere cooks' tricks to stimulate the
languid appetite. To hanker after such things
is to have a longing for physic, not for wholesome
food. Many grand folks who habitually
eat them are miserable creatures, who have to
coax, their stomachs at every meal—pitiable
victims of dyspepsia and gout.

Luxury in feeding rests upon the vulgar idea
that a good dinner must cost a great deal of
money. The height of human felicity with some
people is to drink champagne. Why have they
so high an opinion of that particular wine?
Because it costs more money than any other, and is
supposed to be an aristocratic beverage. But
what is the enjoyment of these pampered feeders
to that of the hungry carter who sits down by
the wayside to thumb a lunch of bread and
cheese, or cold meat? The active vigour of
that man's appetite is superior to all the sauces
in the world.

People who envy the luxurious feasts of the
rich should know that the wise men who sit
down to them only make a pretence of partaking
of the so-called good things that are placed
before them. I have heard that the cabinet
ministers, before they go into the City to the
Lord Mayor's banquet, dine quietly at home on
some simple and wholesome viand, knowing that
there will be many dishes on the groaning tables
of Guildhall which they dare not touch. The
Queen spreads her table with all the most
elaborate productions of the culinary art; but she
herself makes her dinner off a cut of simple mutton.
Cook as you will, and lavish money as you will,
there is no exceeding the enjoyment of that
carter sitting by the roadside thumbing his bread
and cheese!

The popular idea of the pleasure attending
drinking is, perhaps, more fallacious than any
other. Strong drink is a luxury that is within
the reach of all. No man is so poor in this
country that he cannot find money to buy
drink. The wretched, ragged, shoeless beggar
in the street excites charity by the pretence that
he is wanting bread. He does want bread,
perhaps, but when a penny is thrown to him he
goes to the public-house and spends it in gin.
A man in a better station, when he chances to
have a lucky hit, takes the same direction as the
beggar. He never rests until he sets the
champagne corks popping. In both these cases the
impulse arises from an exaggerated idea of the
pleasures of drinking.

It has become a sort of popular, almost
national, faith, that it is not possible to be truly
happy unless you drink. Among certain classes
—and they are by no means exclusively the
lowest—drink is the beginning and end of everything.
The very name of liquor is held to be
synonymous with enjoyment, and the dearer the
liquor, the more it is prized and coveted. Yet
every man who is not a downright drunkard is
well aware that the pleasures of drinking are,
beyond a certain point, a mockery, a delusion,
and a snare. I put it to any one who has stood
half the night at a pewter bar, or sat half the
night in a club-room, drinking, smoking, and
bandying reckless talk, if the enjoyment of snch
an evening has been anything like that of a few
quiet hours spent at home with a book or a
newspaper? The evil influence of riotous tavern
pleasures upon the health is too obvious to be
denied by any one, and the illusory nature of
the pleasures themselves would be undeniable
also, if the persons who indulge in them did not
deceive themselves and put the truth out of
sight. No one ever brought any good out of a
drinking bout yet. It is a short feverish spasm
of animal enjoyment, which leaves nothing
behind but moroseness, regret, bad temper, self-
reproach, and headache. I should like to ask
you, sir, if you say your prayers when you come
home in that state? No; you don't. You are
ashamed to say them. You postpone them until
you have purged yourself—your mind and your
lips—by more sober and rational behaviour.
Next night, when you pass the hours quietly at
home with a book or a friend, you feel that you
have had real enjoyment, that the time has
passed pleasantly, that you have learned
something, and that you have not injured your health.
You are not ashamed to say your prayers, and
you get up next morning with a clear head, a
good appetite, and an increased faculty for work
and the enjoyment of life.