The Forefathers' Stomach.
By Helen Campbell
FAR be it from the writer to speak lightly of anything appertaining to the forefathers, from conscience down. Conscience they have transmitted, and if its methods of exercise have altered, its possession in fullest measure still distinguishes the New England character, above all with the women of New England. But the more material organ has evaded the laws that gave us the immaterial, and leaves us to question whether the treatment it received has not resulted in annihilation, if not of the organ itself, then of a good two-thirds of its ancient force. The forefathers brought with them the English capacity for beef and ale, and if the early years held sadly small provision of either, later ones showed the abundance dear to the Anglo-Saxon soul. There are records of good cheer in early colonial papers, in which strong water in punch, and mighty jorums of ale and cider, are matched by equal store of roast and boiled, over which the mothers wax jovial, and Byles, and many another famous name, show themselves valiant trencher-men. There is no hint that stomachs had revolted, or were more to their owners than comfortable receptacles of all creature comforts. No one had discovered that a different climate and different conditions demanded a fresh adjustment and altered methods, and the cramming went on, till the natural result followed. Too stern a demand on faith brought the reaction of speculation and faithlessness that for a time ran riot in theology, and too strenuous a holding to mere material traditions of good living lost us the stomach for which at present we wail. As the foremothers, by incessant overwork, mortgaged our inheritance of nerve power, the forefathers in turn absorbed in the eighteenth the whole digestive force of the nineteenth century, willing to us instead "the blues," part and parcel of the average student of to-day. It is certain that nervous irritability increases, rather than decreases, not alone for the student, or the minister, but for all whose brains work harder than their hands. The rise into clear ether, and the inspiration that means the noble sermon or essay, the argument in court, the picture alive with suggestion, means a fall proportioned to the rise, and a fit of the blues in which sympathetic friends look on commiseratingly, and the wife or husband, as the case may be, walks softly before the presence, and wards off everything that can add a feather's weight of annoyance. For many of them only the skim-milk of life is allowed as their portion, and the cream is reserved for the outside world. And if this is true of most brain-workers it is especially so of ministers, who, living chiefly for soul more than most men, are ignorant of bodily needs. In this day of exaction, when the sermon must hold not only instruction but inspiration, the minister probably does more exhausting brain-work than any three of the ministerial forefathers. Like all brain-workers, he is apt to own a hearty appetite. Like them, also, he forgets that stomach has been depleted by those same forefathers, and that, while hunger is legitimate, mince pie and pickles and cheese for lunch, and coffee, hot biscuits, and cakes with butter and syrup for breakfast, are food, not for brain, but for "the blues," which thrive on such diet, and grow more and more assertive day by day.—Helen Campbell, in Congregationalist.