Germans or Italians do, and make but little use either of spoon or fork.
I complain that they did not keep up the fashion, begun after the example
of kings, to change our napkin at every service, as they do our plate.
We are told of that laborious soldier Marius that, growing old, he became
nice in his drink, and never drank but out of a particular cup of his own
I, in like manner, have suffered myself to fancy a certain form of
glasses, and not willingly to drink in common glasses, no more than from
a strange common hand: all metal offends me in comparison of a clear and
transparent matter: let my eyes taste, too, according to their capacity.
I owe several other such niceties to custom. Nature has also, on the
other side, helped me to some of hers: as not to be able to endure more
than two full meals in one day, without overcharging my stomach, nor a
total abstinence from one of those meals without filling myself with
wind, drying up my mouth, and dulling my appetite; the finding great
inconvenience from overmuch evening air; for of late years, in night
marches, which often happen to be all night long, after five or six hours
my stomach begins to be queasy, with a violent pain in my head, so that I
always vomit before the day can break. When the others go to breakfast,
I go to sleep; and when I rise, I am as brisk and gay as before. I had
always been told that the night dew never rises but in the beginning of
the night; but for some years past, long and familiar intercourse with
a lord, possessed with the opinion that the night dew is more sharp and
dangerous about the declining of the sun, an hour or two before it sets,
which he carefully avoids, and despises that of the night, he almost
impressed upon me, not so much his reasoning as his experiences. What,
shall mere doubt and inquiry strike our imagination, so as to change us?
Such as absolutely and on a sudden give way to these propensions, draw
total destruction upon themselves. I am sorry for several gentlemen who,
through the folly of their physicians, have in their youth and health
wholly shut themselves up: it were better to endure a cough, than, by