Plain white bread supplies more caloric, or energy, for the price than any other one food, and, with one or two exceptions, more proteid, or building material, than any other one food.
One to one and a half fluid ounces of alcohol is about the amount which can be completely oxidized in the body in a day. This quantity is contained in two fluid ounces of brandy or whiskey, five fluid ounces of port or sherry, ten of claret or champagne or other light wines, and twenty of bottled beer. All this means that a pint of claret, or two glasses of champagne, or a bottle of beer, or a glass of whiskey with some aerated water during the day will not hurt a man, and adds perhaps to the "agreeableness of life," as Matthew Arnold phrases it. At any rate, this table of contents is a much safer standard of comparison, in judging the eating and drinking habits of other people, than either your habits or mine.
The German student probably drinks too much, and it is said by safe authorities in Germany that his heart, liver, and kidneys suffer; but he has been at it a long time, and in certain fields of intellectual prowess he is still supreme, and as we only drink with him now occasionally when he is our host, perhaps he had best be left to settle these questions without our criticism.
In general terms, I have always considered, as a test of myself and others, that a healthy man is one who lies down at night without fear, rises in the morning cheerfully, goes to a day's serious work of some kind rejoicing in the prospect, meets his friends gayly, and loves his loves better than himself.
It is folly to maintain, that it does not require pluck and courage to stand up to a swinging Schläger, and take your punishment without flinching, and then to sit without a murmur while your wounds are sewn up and bandaged. I cannot help my preference for foot-ball, or baseball, or rowing, or a cross-country run with the hounds, or grouse or pheasant shooting, or the shooting of bigger game, or the driving of four horses, or the handling of a boat in a breeze of wind, but the "world is so full of a number of things" that he has more audacity than I who proposes to weigh them all in the scales of his personal experience, and then to mark them with their relative values.