Virginia Argus

TEMPERANCE.

The Reader will smile at the pleasantry, as well as approve the good sense of the following thoughts on temperance, taken from "The Invalid," by the late rev R. Graves.

"It has been observed that all other animals besides man, are contented with one species of food; flesh, fish, or fowl, or vegetables; and never encroach on that of different species.

"The lion, though invested with sovereign power, and living in regal style, is contented with the leg of a calf or the haunch of a stag; never thinks of a second course, or of a dessert, or even of a sauce cauliflower, or carrot, pickled cucumber or the like.

"The eagle also, king of the birds, feasts himself and his royal family, the young princes and the infants, On a brace of pheasants, a turkey, or a dozen of pigeons; but would not debase himself by stooping to a nest of larks or robin red-breasts, for a second course.

"But man, as lord of the creation, by prerogative, falls foul of whatever comes in his way, and ransacks the universe to gratify his voracious appetite: the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea the beasts of the forest, with vegetables of every species: not only herbs, which were intended for the use of man, but roots which seem reserved for the food and the snouts of hogs; nay.. even the excrescences of nature, mushrooms and truffles, indigestible substances which if they were ever intended to be eaten, it must probably have been by the inhabitants of the infernal regions.

"If temperance, however, regulated our use of those various articles of food with which Providence indulges us; if we killed the animals without cruelty and cooked them with plainness & simplicity, they might be what Providence intended them, instead of what we too often make them a blessing, and not a curse. But when we torture them in taking away their lives, as we often do, and scarify, carbonade, and bedevil their flesh, not only with pepper and salt, as we do the gizzard of a Turkey, but add a little nutmeg, a little cinnamon, a blade of mace, with shallots and onions, &c. and eat it without vinegar and mustard, such an heterogeneous mixture, instead of producing a lactrous chyle flowing through the alimentary canal, like the stream of Arno, must become a caustic fluid, rushing like the fiery torment of Vesuvius, harrowing up and tearing the vessels; or at least generate fevers, caden ures and every disease incident to the human body."