Vegetarianism and the Simple Life by L. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 5, 1906

Vegetarianism and the Simple Life

By L. A. S.

L. A. S.

ONE of the chief faults of modern civilized life, unquestionably, is that it has lost its simplicity. Simplicity of living leaves a person time to attend to and enjoy the real essential things of life, which promote intellectual and moral growth. But the intensely civilized life of to-day compels people to devote all their time to the incidental things,—eating and drinking and dressing, etc. Women are compelled to drudge in the kitchen, getting up a thousand and one different preparations for the table which might be dispensed with to the advantage of all concerned, and other heavy tributes of time and effort are levied by the god of fashion which rules the complex life of the day. In some “Confessions of a Vegetarian,” by the Rev. Charles M. Sheldon, printed in a recent issue of The Independent, he says on this point:—

“I recall with a feeling of shame the immense amount of work it put on my mother and sisters, the bill of fare we men demanded on our farm for breakfast. We thought we must have, and did have, beefsteak and potatoes, eggs, hot biscuit, coffee, griddle-cakes, molasses, apple sauce, and very often some kind of pie. Dinner was, in the language of the card table, several better than this, and supper was a resounding echo of breakfast. We had meat three times a day, and thought we could not live without it. It is a marvel to me now that we have any of us lived so long with it.”

Mr. Sheldon became a vegetarian long before the exposures regarding the unpalatable and dangerous character of meat foods, and has found such a diet to be very conducive to his welfare. He gives a description from his own experience on this point which is worth repeating. He says:—

“There was a man once who, when the dew was on his strawberry vines, and the wren that had her nest in the box-elder near his bedroom window had begun her morning thanks, arose and dressed him leisurely and strode out into his little garden at the back of his lot, and without losing any of the wren’s melody plucked him a bunch of radishes, cut a liberal supply of heads of tender lettuce, picked a pan of strawberries, and while in the garden took out of the soil several handfuls of young beets with their tops, and also picked a dish of green peas. Going back to the house, he picked over and washed the vegetables and berries, laying the peas and beets aside to be cooked for dinner. The radishes, lettuce, berries, together with a pitcher of milk and a plate of crackers or bread, went on the table. Breakfast was ready. There had been no banging of stove lids, no frantic stirring of the hot fire on a hot summer morning, no greasy odor of bacon or beefsteak pervading the house, no toilsome and lengthy preparation on the part of a flush-faced ‘hired girl’ to get ready coffee, steak, and hot biscuit for reluctant stomachs of people who are going to leave half the breakfast on their plates to be wasted or served up again in hash. The time this man used to get this breakfast ready was the time spent by the wren in her morning devotions, but it was enough. I could tell the name of this man and of this wren, but these confessions are already too personal.

“Not only do civilized people eat too much, but they spend twice the time necessary in getting food ready to eat. I do not see why my wife should be expected to spend more than half her lifetime planning meals and getting them on the table, or why another woman called the ‘help’ should spend three fourths her time in washing a multitude of dirty dishes and putting them back on the table to be dirtied again. The vegetable habit simplifies life. It helps us do other things besides get our meals. Ten minutes is time enough to get breakfast. Then we have leisure to eat slowly the little we have. The general American plan is to spend half an hour getting twice as much food on the table as the family needs, and then omit family prayers, and hurry through breakfast in fifteen minutes.

“If The Independent prints this article, I foresee trouble for myself. People are going to write to ask what the vegetarian does when he is invited out; when he is one of the victims at a banquet; when apples are two for a quarter in New York; when the frost has taken the peaches in Delaware, and the potato-bug has eaten all the invisible supply in Nebraska. These things do not trouble me. Most of my friends have enough on their tables besides meat to keep me from starving until I get home. If apples fail, I fall back on prunes. At most banquets there are radishes, celery, and olives. If potatoes are high, I can thrive on rice.

“Meanwhile I have the satisfaction of unusually good health, and the consciousness every day that, so far as I am concerned, no man need work in an abattoir, and the double satisfaction of the consciousness every day that, so far as I am concerned again, the beef trust can get nothing out of me.”