There is a very odd prejudice against pie as an article of diet. It is
common to hear every form of bodily degeneracy and infirmity attributed
to this particular favorite food. I see no reason or sense in it.
Mr. Emerson believed in pie, and was almost indignant when a
fellow-traveller refused the slice he offered him. “Why, Mr.________,”
said be, “what is pie made for!” If every Green Mountain boy has not
eaten a thousand times his weight in apple, pumpkin, squash, and mince
pie, call me a dumpling. And Colonel Ethan Allen was one of them,--Ethan
Allen, who, as they used to say, could wrench off the head of a wrought
nail with his teeth.
If you mean to keep as well as possible, the less you think about your
health the better. You know enough not to eat or drink what you have
found does not agree with you. You ought to know enough not to expose
yourself needlessly to draughts. If you take a “constitutional,” walk
with the wind when you can, and take a closed car against it if you can
get one. Walking against the wind is one of the most dangerous kinds of
exposure, if you are sensitive to cold. But except a few simple rules
such as I have just given, let your health take care of itself so long
as it behaves decently. If you want to be sure not to reach threescore
and twenty, get a little box of homoeopathic pellets and a little book
of homeopathic prescriptions. I had a poor friend who fell into that
way, and became at last a regular Hahnemaniac. He left a box of his
little jokers, which at last came into my hands. The poor fellow had
cultivated symptoms as other people cultivate roses or chrysanthemums.
What a luxury of choice his imagination presented to him! When one
watches for symptoms, every organ in the body is ready to put in its
claim. By and by a real illness attacked him, and the box of little
pellets was shut up, to minister to his fancied evils no longer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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