REV. JOHN E. B. MAYOR,
M. A. FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, AND PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.


When I was a school-boy of eight or nine, I was persuaded to buy some
cigars and put one to my mouth for a moment. I threw it away, and have
never touched tobacco since. I compute that I must have saved some
1500 pounds by abstaining from this narcotic. My two brothers--one 3rd
wrangler, the other 2nd classic--have also abstained for life. I know
no indulgence which leads people to disregard the feelings of others
so utterly as smoking does; nor can I believe a deadly poison can be
habitually taken without great injury to the nerves. Alcohol I have
not touched for more than two years, nor flesh meat, nor tea, nor
coffee. All my life long I have had no difficulty in adopting any diet
whatever; but I am sure that since I confined myself to fruits and
farinacea, life has gone easier with me. No one ever heard me complain
of the want of a dinner, or of the quality of what was set before me;
but I now know that a day or two's fasting will do me no sort of harm,
[Footnote: Twice in my life I have tried the experiment of a
_strictly_ vegetarian diet (_without milk, batter, eggs, fish
or flesh_)-once when I was about twelve years old, and again, for
forty-eight days, beginning On the 25th June, 1878. I had been for
some months taking regular exercise (a rare thing with me), walking on
four miles every morning from six to seven, so that I was in rude
health. I was just beginning a stiff piece of literary work on
Juvenal, which involved the daily examination of several hundred
passages of authors, chiefly Greek and Latin; and I wished to try how
far vegetarian diet would enable me to resist the depressing influence
of fasting. I mapped out my forty-eight days into four divisions of