connection.

That which we handle most unglovedly is our food, which we handle
with our stomachs rather than with our hands. Our hands are so
thickly encased with skin that protoplasm can hold but small
conversation with what they contain, unless it be held for a long
time in the closed fist, and even so the converse is impeded as in a
strange language; the inside of our mouths is more naked, and our
stomachs are more naked still; it is here that protoplasm brings its
fullest powers of suasion to bear on those whom it would proselytise
and receive as it were into its own communion--whom it would convert
and bring into a condition of mind in which they shall see things as
it sees them itself, and, as we commonly say, "agree with" it,
instead of standing out stiffly for their own opinion. We call this
digesting our food; more properly we should call it being digested
by our food, which reads, marks, learns, and inwardly digests us,
till it comes to understand us and encourage us by assuring us that
we were perfectly right all the time, no matter what any one might
have said, or say, to the contrary. Having thus recanted all its
own past heresies, it sets to work to convert everything that comes
near it and seems in the least likely to be converted. Eating is a
mode of love; it is an effort after a closer union; so we say we
love roast beef. A French lady told me once that she adored veal;
and a nurse tells her child that she would like to eat it. Even he
who caresses a dog or horse pro tanto both weds and eats it.
Strange how close the analogy between love and hunger; in each case
the effort is after closer union and possession; in each case the
outcome is reproduction (for nutrition is the most complete of
reproductions), and in each case there are residua. But to return.