constitute one's meals. At the same time we should be chary of excluding from our bill of fare any staple article of food simply because, once or twice, and perhaps under exceptional conditions, it has affected us disagreeably. While the proof of the pudding may be in the eating, it can hardly be considered conclusive proof unless the particular kind of pudding has been eaten more than once or twice or thrice.

On the whole, however, priests, like other people, probably injure their internal economy, and, as a consequence, the efficiency of their labors, more by eating the things they like than by abstaining from those they dislike. Scarcely if at all less than the laity, the clergy are concerned in this fact unanimously affirmed by the world's best physicians: "Gastronomic errors are among the most widespread of man's sins, and the penalties he pays therefor are from the nature of the case not merely expiative but retributory; not merely penitential, but punitive, since often 'the wages of sin is death."" In so far as priests, and more particularly middle-aged and elderly priests, are concerned, these gastronomic errors may be succinctly expressed in the statement that they partake too often of the wrong kinds of food, and eat too much of the right kinds. Nor is there any intention whatever on the part of the writer, in making this statement, of implying that the clergy (himself included) are given to even the lesser degrees of the sin of gluttony. Most of our transgressions in this respect are errors of judgment rather than wilful violations of the moral law. That the

errors are quasi-universal would seem to be the opinion of standard dietetic authorities, since they assert that "we all eat about a third too much."

Without going into any more or less technical discussion of the quantitative and qualitative values of nitrogenous and non-nitrogenous foods, or of the correct proportions of proteins, carbohydrates and fats in our ordinary meals, we may mention some outstanding common-sense principles that should be taken account of in the matter of determining what we shall eat. One of these is that both the kind and the quantity of the food we take should vary, somewhat, according to the nature of our habitual activities. The sedentary man engaged in mental work and the day-laborer whose exertion is purely muscular evidently do not require the same diet, and if they habitually take the same kind and quantity of food, one of the two will be committing a gastronomic sin. Father Clarence, who spends his forenoon between his office and his study, attending to his correspondence, or reading, clearly does not need so full a dinner of meat, eggs, milk, cheese, or leguminous vegetables as does his man Mike, whose forenoon has been devoted to sawing wood, shoveling coal, or digging in the field or garden. And if, nevertheless, Father Clarence indulges in so hearty a dinner, elementary knowledge of physiology should teach him that it is incumbent upon him to take a considerable amount of physical exercise before again sitting down to eat. It ought to be axiomatic that, if the body is to be kept in a healthy condition, some sort of nutritional equi

librium must be established, that there should be some proportion between the output of heat and energy and the intake of food, since, after all, the principal if not the sole purpose of food is to replace in our body the matter absorbed by the functions of life and the exertions of labor.

It may prove not uninteresting to enumerate here several of the propositions which United States scientists commonly use as factors in computing the results of systematic dietary studiespropositions based largely upon experimental data. Given that a man at moderately active muscular work needs in a certain period thirty ounces of food, then a man at hard muscular work needs in the same period thirty-six ounces, one at light muscular work needs twenty-seven ounces, and one at a sedentary occupation needs only twentyfour ounces. On this basis the priest's man Mike, of the preceding paragraph, would need one and a half times as much dinner as the priest himself; and it would clearly be a dietetic indiscretion for Father Clarence to reverse the proportion and eat one and a half times as much as Mike. And yet it is questionable whether the clergy form any exception to Franklin's rule: "In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eat twice as much as nature requires." There seems to be no good reason for doubting the statement made by innumerable medical practitioners, that for every person who in our day and country dies from insufficient nutrition, starvation, there are at least a dozen or a score whose death is the indirect, and very often the direct, result of overeating. Vol

taire is not an author who commends himself particularly to clerical readers; but the most orthodox priest will hardly quarrel with these precepts of that arch-infidel: "Regimen is better than physic. Every one should be his own physician.-Eat with moderation what you know by experience to agree with your constitution.-Nothing is good for the body but what we can digest. What can procure digestion? Exercise."

Eating the wrong kind of food is not perhaps so prevalent a gastronomic error, among clerics or others, as eating too much of the right kinds; but it is an existent error, nevertheless. If we have not personally proved this in our own experience (as in all probability most of us now and then have proved it), we have at least verified the statement in our observation of others. Memory forthwith supplies the present writer with several notable examples. To mention only one: Father Michael, an exemplary cleric of three and a quarter score years, had during a considerable number of those years been afflicted with stomach troubles. Reiterated experiences had convinced him that eating meat at his supper was the forerunner of inevitable distress throughout the night and the following day; and accordingly as a rule he abstained therefrom. Now and then, however, when his digestive apparatus had been functioning nicely for a week or two, and when on the supper-table there appeared a variety of meat to which he was partial-cold turkey or country sausage, for instance he would allow himself to be persuaded to take "just a small piece, a mere mouthful." The

said mouthful being consumed, he would remark: "Do you know, that is really delicious. I think I'll take a little more," and would proceed to do so, with considerable present satisfaction no doubt, but a satisfaction as short-lived as his subsequent discomfort was protracted. Who has not known such a dietetic blunderer? "We eat," writes a medical author, "not to supply our needs, but to satiate our appetites. We are woefully lacking in the strength of mind necessary to deny ourselves those things which experience has proved to be objectionable, much less to practise general and protracted self-denial, until grim admonition from within drives us thereto."

It is worth while to remark that the men who, like Father Michael, receive this "grim admonition from within" immediately, or soon, after their making a gastronomic blunder, are on the whole more fortunate than some others who continue for years to commit dietetic mistakes without receiving from their internal organs any decided protest. A recent writer on the smoking habit shrewdly declares that while excessive smoking, like gluttony, is harmful, the fact that the former works immediately is a wise provision of nature, since discontinuance leads to recovery, while immoderate eating tends insidiously to produce organic disturbances which may become irremediable before they are discovered, and may not yield to better counsel and improved habits. So true is this, that, of the thirty-five thousand Americans who, according to our government reports, annually succumb to Bright's disease, fully one-half, it