How to Behave: A Pocket Manual of Republican Etiquette, and Guide to Correct Personal Habits by Samuel Roberts Wells (epub read online books txt) 📖

rye flour, or of corn meal with either, makes excellent bread. The meal and flour should be freshly ground; they deteriorate by being kept long. If raised or fermented bread is required, hop yeast is the best ferment that can be used. [For complete directions for bread-making, see Dr. Trall's "Hydropathic Cook-Book."]

The exclusive use of fine or bolted flour for bread, biscuits, and cakes of all kinds, is exceedingly injurious to health. The lignin or woody fiber which forms the bran of grains is just as essential to a perfect and healthful nutrition as are starch, sugar, gum, and fibrin, and the rejection of this element is one of the most mischievous errors of modern cookery.

Johnny-cake, or corn bread, is an excellent article, which is not yet fully appreciated. It is palatable and wholesome. Hominy, samp, cracked wheat, oatmeal mush, and boiled rice should have a high place on your list of edibles. Beans and peas should be more generally eaten than they are. They are exceedingly nutritious, and very palatable. In New England, "pork and beans" hold the place of honor, but elsewhere in this country they are almost unknown. Leaving out the pork (which, personally, we hold in more than Jewish abhorrence), nothing can be better, provided they are eaten in moderation and with a proper proportion of less nutritious food. They should be well baked in pure, soft water. A sufficient quantity of salt to season them, with the addition of a little sweet milk, cream, or butter while baking, leaves nothing to be desired. If meat is wanted, however, a slice of beefsteak, laid upon the surface, will serve a better purpose than pork. Potatoes, beets, turnips, carrots, parsneps, and cabbages are good in their place.

But Nature indicates very plainly that fruits and berries, in their season, should have a prominent place in our dietary. They are produced in abundance, and every healthy stomach instinctively craves them. Strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, whortleberries, cherries, plums, grapes, figs, apples, pears, peaches, and melons are "food fit for gods." We pity those whose perverted taste or digestion leads to their rejection. But some are afraidto eat fruits and berries, particularly in midsummer, just the time when nature and common sense say they should be eaten most freely. They have the fear of cholera, dysentery, and similar diseases before their eyes, and have adopted the popular but absurd idea that fruit eating predisposes to disorders of the stomach and bowels. Exactly the reverse is the fact. There are no better preventives of such diseases than ripe fruits and berries, eaten in proper quantities and at proper times Unripe fruits should be scrupulously avoided, and that which is in any measure decayed as scarcely less objectionable. Fruit and berries should make a part of every meal in summer. In winter they are less necessary, but may be eaten with advantage, if within our reach; and they are easily preserved in various ways.

We might write a volume on the subject of food, but these general hints must suffice. If you would pursue the inquiry, read O. S. Fowler's "Physiology, Animal and Mental," and the "Hydropathic Cook-Book," already referred to.

2. When to Eat.

Eat when the stomach, through the instinct of appetite, demands a new supply of food. If all your habits are regular, this will be at about the same hours each day; and regularity in the time of taking our meals is very important. Want of attention to this point is a frequent cause of derangement of the digestive organs. We can not stop to discuss the question how many meals per day we should eat; but whether you eat one, two, or three, never, under ordinary circumstances, take lunches. The habit of eating between meals is a most pernicious one. Not even your children must be indulged in it, as you value their health, comfort, and good behavior.

3. How Much to Eat.

We can not tell you, by weight or measure, how much to eat, the right quantity depending much upon age, sex, occupation, season, and climate, but the quantity is quite as important as the quality. Appetite would be a sure guide in both respects were it not so often perverted and diseased. As a general rule, we eat too much. It is better to err in the other direction. An uncomfortable feeling of fullness, or of dullness and stupor after a meal is a sure sign of over-eating, so whatever and whenever you eat, eat slowly, masticate your food well, and DO NOT EAT TOO MUCH.

4. Drink.

If we eat proper food, and in proper quantity, we are seldom thirsty. Inordinate thirst indicates a feverish state of either the stomach or the general system. It is pretty sure to follow a too hearty meal.

Water is the proper drink for everybody and for every thing that lives or grows. It should be pure and soft. Many diseases arise wholly from the use of unwholesome water. If you drink tea (which we do not recommend), let it be the best of black tea, and not strong. Coffee, if drunk at all, should be diluted with twice its quantity of boiled milk, and well sweetened with white sugar.

IV.—BREATHING.

Breathing is as necessary as eating. If we cease to breathe, our bodies cease to live. If we only half breathe, as is often the case, we only half live. The human system requires a constant supply of oxygen to keep up the vital processes which closely resemble combustion, of which oxygen is the prime supporter. If the supply is insufficient, the fire of life wanes. The healthy condition of the lungs also requires that they be completely expanded by the air inhaled. The imperfect breathing of many persons fails to accomplish the required inflation, and the lungs become diseased for want of their natural action. Full, deep breathing and pure air are as essential to health, happiness, and the right performance of our duties, whether individual, political, or social, as pure food and temperate habits of eating and drinking are. Attend, then, to the lungs as well as the stomach. Breathe good air. Have all your rooms, and especially your sleeping apartment well ventilated. The air which has been vitiated by breathing or by the action of fire, which abstracts the oxygen and supplies its place with carbonic acid gas, is a subtle poison.

V.—EXERCISE.

The amount of physical exercise required varies with age, sex, and temperament; but no person can enjoy vigorous health without a considerable degree of active bodily exertion. Four or five hours per day spent in the open air, in some labor or amusement which calls for the exercise of the muscles of the body, is probably no more than a proper average. We can live with less—that is, for a short time; but Nature's laws are inexorable, and we can not escape the penalty affixed to their violation. Those whose occupations are sedentary should seek amusements which require the exertion of the physical powers, and should spend as much as possible of their leisure time in the open air. We must, however, use good judgment in this matter as well as in eating. Too much exercise at once, or that which is fitful and violent, is often exceedingly injurious to those whose occupations have accustomed them to little physical exertion of any kind.

The women of our country are suffering incalculably for want of proper exercise. No other single cause perhaps is doing so much to destroy health and beauty, and deteriorate the race, as this. "Your women are very handsome," Frederika Bremer said, one day, "but they are too white; they look as if they grew in the shade." A sad truth. Ladies, if you would be healthy, beautiful, and attractive—if you would fit yourselves to be good wives, and the mothers of strong and noble men, you must take an adequate amount of exercise in the open air. This should be an every-day duty.

VI.—THE COMPLEXION.

Every person, and especially every lady, desires a clear complexion. To secure this, follow the foregoing directions in reference to cleanliness, eating, drinking, breathing, and exercise. The same recipe serves for ruby lips and rosy cheeks. These come and go with health, and health depends upon obedience to the laws of our constitution.

VII.—GENERAL HINTS.

Few of us are free from disagreeable habits of which we are hardly conscious, so seemingly natural have they become to us. It is the office of friendship, though not always a pleasant one, to point them out. It is our business to assume that office here, finding our excuse in the necessity of the case. Our bad habits not only injure ourselves, but they give offense to others, and indirectly injure them also.

1. Tobacco.

Ladies, in this country, do not use tobacco, so they may skip this section. A large and increasing number of gentlemen may do the same; but if you use tobacco, in any forth, allow us to whisper a useful hint or two in your ear.

Smoking, snuff-taking, and especially chewing, are bad habits at best, and in their coarser forms highly disgusting to pure and refined people, and especially to ladies. You have the same right to smoke, take snuff, and chew that you have to indulge in the luxuries of a filthy skin and soiled garments, but you have no right, in either case, to do violence to the senses and sensibilities of other people by their exhibition in society. Smoke if you will, chew, take snuff (against our earnest advice, however), make yourself generally and particularly disagreeable, but you must suffer the consequences—the social outlawry which must result. Shall we convert our parlors into tobacco shops, risk the ruin of our carpets and furniture from the random shots of your disgusting saliva, and fill the whole atmosphere of our house with a pungent stench, to the discomfort and disgust of everybody else, merely for the pleasure of your company? We have rights as well as you, one of which is to exclude from our circle all persons whose manners or habits are distasteful to us. You talk of rights. You can not blame others for exercising theirs.

There are degrees here as everywhere else. One may chew a little, smoke an occasional cigar, and take a pinch of snuff now and then, and if he never indulges in these habits in the presence of others, and is very careful to purify his person before going into company, he may confine the bad effects, which he can not escape, mostly to his own person. But he must not smoke in any parlor, or sitting-room, or dining-room, or sleeping chamber, or in the street, and particularly not in the presence of ladies, anywhere.

2. Spitting.

"The use of tobacco has made us a nation of spitters," as some one has truly remarked. Spitting is a private act, and tobacco users are not alone in violating good taste and good manners by hawking and spitting in company. You should never be seen to spit. Use your handkerchief carefully and so as not to be noticed, or, in case of necessity, leave the room.

3. Gin and Gentility.

The spirit and tenor of our remarks on tobacco will apply to the use of ardent spirits. The fumes of gin, whisky, and rum are, if possible, worse than the scent of tobacco. They must on no account be brought into company. If a man (this is another section which women may skip) will make a beast of himself, and fill his blood with liquid poison, he must, if he desires admission into good company, do it either privately or with companions whose senses and appetites are as depraved as his own.

4. Onions, etc.

All foods or drinks which taint the breath or cause disagreeable eructations should be avoided by persons going into