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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume III, Issue 170, 15 April 1864, Page 5 (Supplement)

The Weongs of the Stomach.— ln most literatures is to be found a dialogue between the Body and Soul, in which each accuses the other of their mutual perdition, recapitulating the offences which have produced it. Something similar might be written with good effect, dividing the imaginary conversation between, let us say the Stomach and the Man, and making an attack of gout the subject of their recriminations. The Man might accuse the Stomach of having done its duty so badly that be is tormented with a burning fire in his extremities which will neither let him eat, drink, walk, or rest. The Stomach might plead justification, and say that she had lighted the said fire as the only means of getting a moment’s rest from an intolerable task-master. Again the man might complain that he had lost all enjoyment of life, that his spirits were depressed, his mind gloomy, his appetite gone, bis once fine muscular system reduced to flabbly indolence ; that his food did him more harm than good, so that it had become a misery to eat, and that every meal was followed by a leaden oppression which rendered life an insupportable burden. The Stomach having listened to all this, delivered in a tone of angry accusation, would reply, “My ease is just as bad as your own. Once'upon a time, before you took to evil courses, I was as healthy a stomach a you could meet in a day’s march; I went through my work regularly, and did it so cheerfully and so well that, like some unreasonable masters when they had got hold of a willing servant, you seemed to think I could do without rest, and didn’t care even for an occasional holiday. Tlaen you heaped burden after burden upon me. Before I had well digested your breakfast for you, you gave me a meat luncheon to see to, and before I had got that out of the way, you thrust a dinner upon me large enough for three stomachs, hot satisfied with that, you wound up the day with a supper, drenching me all the time with ale, wine, spirits, tea, coffee, rum, more wine, and more spirits, till I thought you had taken leave of your senses; and when X heard you groaning in your sleep, starting up every now and then as if apoplexy had broken into the house, and was going to carry you off, I said to myself, ‘ Serve him right if it did.’ Aud in this way you went on year after year, treating all my remonstrances with contempt. I gave you head-acbo after head-ache; I tried to recall you to reason "with half-a-dozen attacks of influenza; gave you a bilious fever ; made you smart with rheumatism ; twinged you with gout until you roared. But all to no purpose. You went on making me digest till the work broke my back, and now I can°digest no longer.” This reproach might be made oven pathetic, by a description of the Stomach watching it hard tasks come down to it from the regions above between dinner and bedtime. First comes a plate of soup and bread, and a glass of sherry ; “ 1 can manage that,” says the Stomach, “ though these sauces don’t quite agree with me.” Then comes beef or mutton, or both, and stout; then game and sherry ; then a dish of tart ; “ Confound this pastry,” says the Stomach, “ it gives me more trouble than anything else ; but if the master will only stop here, I think if I put out all my powers, I can get even this rubbish out of the way.” But she has hardly taken this hopeful view of the case, when down comes cheese, celery apples, oranges, nuts, figs, almonds, and raisins, port, sherry, claret, and a tumbler of hot Hollands and water. “ Good gracious, was there ever such a mess ?” exclaims the Stomach ; “ what can the man mean ?” Still the willing slave goes to work, when presently there is a rush of hot tea from above, with a thin slice of bread-and-butter. And when the Stomach with infinite labour has got the hodge-podge into some sort of homogeneous shape, and is preparing to take a nap °aftcr her exbausation lo! a devilled drumstick rushes its laboratory, two devilled kidneys, a bottle of stout, and three tumblers of brandy-and-water. Some one has said that if all a man eats in a day were placed in a dish before him, he would wonder how, after such consumption, he could live and not die. Others put the matter more truly,* and tell the “ good liver” that he is daily killing himself; not feeding his body, and starving infilling his blood with the seeds of disease; preparing the way for a short life and a miserable one. —London Review.