'Be temperate in all things,' is an excellent rule, and of very high authority. _Drunkenness_ and _Gluttony_ are vices so degrading, that advice is, I must confess, nearly lost on those who are capable of indulging in them. If any youth, unhappily initiated in these odious and debasing vices, should happen to see what I am now writing, I beg him to read the command of God, to the Israelites, Deut. xxi. The father and mother are to take the bad son 'and bring him to the elders of the city; and they shall say to the elders, this our son will not obey our voice: he is a _glutton_ and a _drunkard_. And all the men of the city shall stone him with stones, that he die.' This will give him some idea of the odiousness of his crime, at least in the sight of Heaven. But indulgence _far short_ of gross drunkenness and gluttony is to be deprecated; and the more so, because it is too often looked upon as being no crime at all. Nay, there are many persons, who boast of a refined taste in matters connected with eating and drinking, who are so far from being ashamed of employing their thoughts on the subject, that it is their boast that they do it. Gregory, one of the Christian fathers, says: 'It is not the _quantity_ or the _quality_ of the meat, or drink, but the _love of it_, that is condemned:' that is to say, the indulgence beyond the absolute demands of nature; the hankering after it; the neglect of some duty or other for the sake of the enjoyments of the table. I believe, however, there _may_ be error, both in _quantity_ and _quality_. This _love_ of what are called 'good eating and drinking,' if very unamiable in grown persons, is perfectly hateful in a _youth_; and, if he _indulge_ in the propensity, he is already half ruined. To warn you against acts of fraud, robbery, and violence, is not here my design. Neither am I speaking against acts which the jailor and the hangman punish, nor against those moral offences which all men condemn, but against indulgences, which, by men in general, are deemed not only _harmless_, but _meritorious_; but which observation has taught me to regard as destructive to human happiness; and against which all ought to be cautioned, even in their boyish days. Such indulgences are, in the first place, very _expensive_. The materials are costly, and the preparation still more so. What a monstrous thing, that, in order to satisfy the appetite of one person there must be one or two others _at work constantly_.[3] More fuel, culinary implements, kitchen room: what! all these merely to tickle the palate of four or five people, and especially people who can hardly pay their bills! And, then, the _loss of time_--the time spent in pleasing the palate!