drinking--would keep most people well.

I need not here dwell on the evils of drinking, but we perhaps scarcely
realize how much of the suffering and ill-humor of life is due to
over-eating. Dyspepsia, for instance, from which so many suffer, is in
nine cases out of ten their own fault, and arises from the combination of
too much food with too little exercise. To lengthen your life, says an old
proverb, shorten your meals. Plain living and high thinking will secure
health for most of us, though it matters, perhaps, comparatively little
what a healthy man eats, so long as he does not eat too much.

Mr. Gladstone has told us that the splendid health he enjoys is greatly
due to his having early learnt one simple physiological maxim, and laid it
down as a rule for himself always to make twenty-five bites at every bit
of meat.

"Go to your banquet then, but use delight,
So as to rise still with an appetite." [1]

No doubt, however, though the rule not to eat or drink too much is simple
enough in theory, it is not quite so easy in application. There have been
many Esaus who sold their birthright of health for a mess of pottage.

Moreover, it may seem paradoxical, but it is certainly true, that in the
long run the moderate man will derive more enjoyment even from eating and
drinking, than the glutton or the drunkard will ever obtain. They know not
what it is to enjoy "the exquisite taste of common dry bread." [2]

And yet even if we were to consider merely the pleasure to be derived from
eating and drinking, the same rule would hold good. A lunch of bread and