Part 9 (1/2)

”But you cannot make out a breakfast on our plain fare, without something to drink besides water.”

The old man smiled serenely.

”Your fare cannot be too plain for me. I often breakfast luxuriously on a slice of brown bread and a couple of apples.”

”Brown bread and apples!” exclaimed Mrs. Royden, in surprise. ”Who ever heard of apples for breakfast?”

”I never feel so well as when I make them a large proportion of my food,” replied the clergyman. ”People commit a great error when they use fruits only as luxuries. They are our most simple, natural and healthful food.”

”You have never worked on a farm, I see,” observed Mr. Royden.

”I understand you,”--and the old man, perhaps to ill.u.s.trate his liberal views, ate a piece of fried bacon with evident relish. ”Different natures and different conditions of men certainly demand different systems of diets. If a man has animal strength to support, let him use animal food. But meat is not the best stimulus to the brain. With regard to vegetables, my experience teaches that they are beautifully adapted to our habits of life. Let the man who digs beneath the soil consume the food he finds there. But I will pluck the grape or the peach as I walk, and, eating, find myself refreshed.”

”That is a rather poetical thought,” remarked Chester. ”But I doubt if it be sound philosophy.”

”Oh, I ask no one to accept any theory of my own,” answered the old man, benignly. ”If I talk reason, consider my words; if not,”--smiling significantly, with an expressive gesture,--”let the wind have them.”

”But I think your ideas very interesting,” said Sarah. ”What do you think of bread?”

”It is the _staff of life_. The lower vegetable productions are suited to the grosser natures of men. Those brought forth in the sunlight are more suitable to finer organizations. I place grains as much higher than roots, on a philosophical scale, as the ear of corn is higher than the potato, in a literal sense. Therefore, as grain grows midway between vegetables and fruits, it appears to be wisely designed as the great staple of food. But the nearer heaven the more spiritual. If I am to compose a sermon, let me make a dinner of nuts that have ripened in the broad sunlight, of apples that grow on the highest boughs of the orchard, and of grapes that are found sweetest on the tops of the vines.”

”Very beautiful in theory,” said Chester.

”When you have studied the subject, perhaps you will find some grains of truth in the chaff,” replied the clergyman, with a genial smile.

”In the first place,” rejoined Chester, with the confidence of a man who has a powerful argument to advance, ”speaking of nuts,--let us look at the chestnut. You will everywhere find that the tallest trees produce the poorest nuts.”

”I grant it.”

”Then how does your theory hold?”

Mr. Rensford answered the young man's triumphant look with a mild expression of countenance, which showed a spirit equally happy in teaching or in being taught.

”I think,” said he, ”your tall chestnut-tree is found in forests?”

”Yes, sir; and the spreading chestnut, or the second growth, that springs up and comes to maturity in cleared fields, is found standing alone.”

”It strikes me, then, that the last is _cultivated_. You may expect better nuts from it than from the savage tree. And there is good reason why it should not be of such majestic stature. Its body has room to expand. It is not crowded in the selfish society of the woods; and, to put forth its fruits in the sunlight, it is not obliged to struggle above the heads of emulous companions.”

”But chestnuts are very unhealthy,” said Mrs. Royden, to the relief of Chester, who was at a loss how to reply.

”They should not be unhealthy. If we had not abused our digestive organs, and destroyed our teeth by injurious habits, we would suffer no inconvenience from a few handfuls of chestnuts. As it is, masticate them well, and use them as food,--and not as luxuries, after the gastric juices are exhausted by a hearty dinner,--and I doubt if they would do much harm.”

VII.

CLOUDS AND SUNs.h.i.+NE.

”Dear me!” cried Mrs. Royden, as the clergyman declined tasting the pie Hepsy brought on as a dessert, ”you haven't eaten anything at all! You'd better try a small piece?”

The old man thanked her kindly, adding that he had eaten very heartily.