I wonder, at a time like the present, when the scarcity of every kind of food is so painfully acknowledged, that _shame_ has no effect upon him. Can he have read Mr. Malthus's Thoughts on the Ratio of Food to Population? Can he think it reasonable that one man should consume the sustenance of many?
The young gentleman has an agreeable air and person, such as are not unlikely to recommend him on the score of matrimony. But his fortune is not over-large; and what prudent young woman would think of embarking hers with a man who would bring three or four mouths (or what is equivalent to them) into a family? She might as reasonably choose a widower in the same circumstances, with three or four children.
I cannot think who he takes after. His father and mother, by all accounts, were very moderate eaters; only I have heard that the latter swallowed her victuals very fast, and the former had a tedious custom of sitting long at his meals. Perhaps he takes after both.
I wish you would turn this in your thoughts, Mr. Reflector, and give us your ideas on the subject of excessive eating, and, particularly, of animal food.
MR. REFLECTOR,--I am going to lay before you a case of the most iniquitous persecution that ever poor devil suffered.
You must know, then, that I have been visited with a calamity ever since my birth. How shall I mention it without offending delicacy? Yet out it must. My sufferings, then, have all arisen from a most inordinate appetite----
Not for wealth, not for vast possessions,--then might I have hoped to find a cure in some of those precepts of philosophers or poets,--those verba et voces which Horace speaks of:--
"quibus hunc lenire dolorem Possis, et magnam morbi deponere partem;"
not for glory, not for fame, not for applause,--for against this disease, too, he tells us there are certain piacula, or, as Pope has chosen to render it,
"Rhymes, which fresh and fresh applied, Will cure the arrant'st puppy of his pride;"
nor yet for pleasure, properly so called: the strict and virtuous lessons which I received in early life from the best of parents,--a pious clergyman of the Church of England, now no more,--I trust have rendered me sufficiently secure on that side:----