form his life-work is to take,--whether professional or mercantile or
artisan in one of the many trades,--we can now only give the regimen best
adapted for each.

Supposing his tastes to be scholarly, and a college and professional
career to be chosen, the time has come for slight changes in the system of
diet,--very slight, however. It has become a popular saying among thinkers
upon these questions, "Without phosphorus, no thinking;" and like all
arbitrary utterances it has done more harm than good. The amount of
phosphorus passing through the system bears no relation whatever to the
intensity of thought. "A captive lion," to quote from Dr. Chambers, one of
the most distinguished living authorities on diet, "a leopard, or hare,
which can have wonderfully little to think about, assimilates and parts
with a greater quantity of phosphorus than a professor of chemistry
working hard in his laboratory; while a beaver, who always seems to be
contriving something, excretes so little phosphorus that chemical analysis
cannot detect it."

Phosphatic salts are demanded, but so are other salts, fat, and water;
and the dietaries that order students to live upon fish, eggs, and
oysters, because they are rich in phosphorus, without which the brain
starves, err just so far as they make this the sole reason,--the real
reason being that these articles are all easily digested, and that the
student, leading an inactive muscular life, does not require the heavy,
hearty food of the laborer.

The most perfect regimen for the intellectual life is precisely what would
be advised for the growing boy: frequent _small_ supplies of
easily-digested food, that the stomach may never be overloaded, or the
brain clouded by the fumes of half-assimilated food. If our boy trains for