“For,” said he--“Hunger is the primal civilizer,--the very keystone and foundation of all progress. From the plain, prosy, earthy fact that man is a hungry animal, and must eat, has sprung all the civilization of the world! I shall demonstrate this in my book, beginning with the scriptural legend of Adam’s greed for an apple. Adam was evidently hungry at the moment Eve tempted him. As soon as he had satisfied his inner man, he thought of his outer,--and his next idea was, naturally, tailoring. From this simple conjunction of suggestions, combined with what ‘God’ would have to say to him concerning his food-experiment and fig-leaf apron, man has drawn all his religions, manners, customs and morals. The proposition is self-evident,--but I intend to point it out with somewhat emphasised clearness for the benefit of those persons who are inclined to arrogate to themselves the possession of superior wisdom. Neither brain nor soul has placed man in a position of Supremacy,--merely Hunger and Nakedness!” The Professor was now about fifty-five, but his exceptionally powerful build and robust constitution gave him the grace in appearance of many years younger, though perhaps the extreme composure of his temperament, and the philosophic manner in which he viewed all circumstances, whether pleasing or disastrous, may have exercised the greatest influence in keeping his eyes clear and clean, and his countenance free of unhandsome wrinkles. He was more like a soldier than a doctor, and was proud of his resemblance to the earlier portraits of Bismarck. To see him in his own particular ‘sanctum’ surrounded by weird-looking diagrams of sundry parts of the human frame, mysterious phials and stoppered flasks containing various liquids and crystals, and all the modern appliances for closely examining the fearful yet beautiful secrets of the living organism, was as if one should look upon a rough and burly giant engaged in some delicate manipulation of mosaics. Yet Von Glauben’s large hand was gentler than a woman’s in its touch and gift of healing,--no surgeon alive could probe a wound more tenderly, or with less pain to the sufferer,--and the skill of that large hand was accompanied by the penetrative quality of the large benevolent brain which guided it,--a brain that could encompass the whole circle of the world in its observant and affectionate compassion. “Ach!--who is there that can be angry with anyone?--impatient with anyone,--offended with anyone!” he was wont to say--“Everybody suffers so much and so undeservedly, that as far as my short life goes I have only time for pity--not condemnation!”