the slightest quantity of refreshment while on the road——a cup of tea and a modicum of rice being the extent of his gormandizing during the travel. And they repeat these exploits day after day, never eating meat.” Of the women this writer remarks: “With beautifully rounded arms and limbs, with smallest of feet and hands, and small-boned, they present the spectacle of what the human form should be in its natural grace and finish.... The women, young and old, are seen bearing loads upon their backs that the uninitiated in such work would not be able to stand up under. They will travel miles laden this way with a speed that would suffice to tire an average Western woman if entirely unincumbered. In fact few of our women could at all walk the distance the old women do here while bearing heavy loads. And all this is performed on an abstemious vegetable diet.” Thus it would seem that “the most favorable circumstances,” to use the language of Johnson’s contributor, to enable men and women to live “without meat,” are plenty of hard work in the open air,[55] and a somewhat restricted diet; for it must be remembered that the people of whom we have been speaking, are from necessity the least able to indulge in unlimited quantities of their peculiar food of all the people in the land. [Footnote 55: It is very generally agreed by the most eminent medical men of all schools of practice, that in the absence of free exercise in the open air, animal food _must_ be abstained from.] As to the moral aspect of the question, I grant that a man can not sin without knowledge. If he believes it necessary and right for the higher animals, elevated human beings, to slaughter and feast upon the lower——the gentle, mild-eyed creatures who serve and minister unto us so patiently, so faithfully, and, indeed, so lovingly——then to kill and devour is, for him, no crime. But if men were as ready to learn from their instincts, as they are to yield to their artificial cravings, the natural loathing which all, or most people, feel at the sight of bloodshed, and which so many experience at the bare thought of taking life, would teach us the unnaturalness and therefore the harmfulness of a flesh diet. (See Appetite.)