I. The rapid renewal of the blood is an advantage. 109 II. Digestion. 112 III. Coffee. 114 IV. Coffee as a medicine. 117 V. Usefulness and hurtfulness of coffee. 119 VI. Breakfast. 121 VII. Liquor. 125 VIII. Injuriousness of drinking liquor. 131 IX. The poor and the liquor. 134 X. The consequences of intemperance, and its prevention. 137 XI. Dinner. 140 XII. Necessity for variety in food. 143 XIII. Broth. 146 XIV. What is best to be put into soup. 149 XV. Leguminous vegetables. 152 XVI. Meat and vegetables. 155 XVII. The nap after dinner. 158 XVIII. Water and beer. 161 XIX. The supper. 164 PART I. THE WEIGHT OF THE EARTH. CHAPTER I. HOW MANY POUNDS THE WHOLE EARTH WEIGHS. Natural philosophers have considered and investigated subjects that often appear to the unscientific man beyond the reach of human intelligence. Among these subjects may be reckoned the question, "How many pounds does the whole earth weigh?" One would, indeed, believe that this is easy to answer. A person might assign almost any weight, and be perfectly certain that nobody would run after a scale, in order to examine, whether or not an ounce were wanting. Yet this question is by no means a joke, and the answer to it is by no means a guess; on the contrary, both are real scientific results. The question in itself is as important a one, as the answer, which we are able to give, is a correct one. Knowing the size of our globe, one would think that there was no difficulty in determining its weight. To do this, it would be necessary only to make a little ball of earth that can be accurately weighed; then we could easily calculate how many times the earth is larger than this little ball; and by so doing, we might tell, at one's finger-ends, that--if we suppose the little earth-ball to weigh a hundred-weight--the whole globe, being so many times larger, must weigh so many hundred-weights.