perform all our actions post-haste; and in extending this natural
pleasure to more leisure and better use, intermixing with profitable
conversation.

They whose concern it is to have a care of me, may very easily hinder me
from eating anything they think will do me harm; for in such matters I
never covet nor miss anything I do not see; but withal, if it once comes
in my sight, 'tis in vain to persuade me to forbear; so that when I
design to fast I must be kept apart from the suppers, and must have only
so much given me as is required for a prescribed collation; for if to
table, I forget my resolution. When I order my cook to alter the manner
of dressing any dish, all my family know what it means, that my stomach
is out of order, and that I shall not touch it.

I love to have all meats, that will endure it, very little boiled or
roasted, and prefer them very high, and even, as to several, quite gone.
Nothing but hardness generally offends me (of any other quality I am as
patient and indifferent as any man I have known); so that, contrary to
the common humour, even in fish it often happens that I find them both
too fresh and too firm; not for want of teeth, which I ever had good,
even to excellence, and which age does not now begin to threaten; I have
always been used every morning to rub them with a napkin, and before and
after dinner. God is favourable to those whom He makes to die by
degrees; 'tis the only benefit of old age; the last death will be so much
the less painful; it will kill but a half or a quarter of a man. There
is one tooth lately fallen out without drawing and without pain; it was
the natural term of its duration; in that part of my being and several
others, are already dead, others half dead, of those that were most
active and in the first rank during my vigorous years; 'tis so I melt and
steal away from myself. What a folly it would be in my understanding to