But the reader must not conclude that Ben, through life, tied himself up to a vegetable diet. No. Nature will have her way. And having designed man partly carnivorous, as his canine teeth, his lengthened bowels, and his flesh-pot appetites all evince, she will bring him back to the healthy mixture of animal food with vegetable, or punish his obstinacy with diarrhoea and debility. But she had no great difficulty in bringing Ben back to the use of animal food. According to his own account, no nosegay was ever more fragrant to his olfactories than was the smell of fresh fish in the frying pan. And as to his objection to such a savory diet on account of its stupifying effects on the brain, he easily got the better of that, when he reflected that the witty queen Elizabeth breakfasted on beef-stake; that sir Isaac Newton dined on pheasants; that Horace supped on fat bacon; and that Pope both breakfasted, dined, and supped on shrimps and oysters. And for the objection taken from the cruelty of killing innocent animals, for their flesh, he got over that by the following curious accident:--On his first voyage to New-York, the vessel halting on the coast for lack of breeze, the sailors all fell to fishing for cod, of which they presently took great numbers and very fine. Instead of being delighted at this sight, Ben appeared much hurt, and began to preach to the crew on their "injustice," as he called it, in thus taking away the lives of those poor little fish, who, "_had never injured them, nor ever could_." The sailors were utterly dum-founded at such queer logic as this. Taking their silence for conviction, Ben rose in his argument, and began to play the orator quite outrageously on the main deck. At length an old wag of a boatswain, who had at first been struck somewhat aback by the strangeness of this attack, took courage, and luffing up again, with a fine breeze of humour in his weather-beaten sail, called out to Ben, "_Well, but my young Master preacher, may not we deal by these same cod here, as they deal by their neighbours._" "To be sure," said Ben. "Well then, sir, see here," replied the boatswain, holding up a stout fish, "see here what a whaler I took just now out o' the belly of that cod!" Ben looking as if he had his doubts, the boatswain went on, "O sir, if you come to that, you shall have _proof_;" whereupon he laid hold of a large big-bellied cod that was just then flouncing on the deck, and ripping him open, in the presence of Ben and the crew, turned out several young cod from his maw.