The History of a Mouthful of Bread by Jean Macé (great novels to read txt) 📕

it so easily.

But however well I may have expressed it, I am by no means sure, after all, that I have succeeded in showing you clearly, how absolutely necessary our hand is to us in eating, and why it has the honor to stand at the beginning of the history of what we eat.

It still appears to you, I suspect, that even if you were to lose the use of your hands you would not, for all that, let yourself die of hunger.

This is because you have not attended to another circumstance, which nevertheless demands your notice-namely, that from one end of the world to the other, quantities of hands are being employed in providing you with the wherewithal to eat.

To go on further: Have you any idea how many hands have been put in motion merely to enable you to have your coffee and roll in the morning? What a number, to be sure, over this cup of coffee (which is a trifle in comparison with the other food you will consume in the course of the day); from the hand of the negro who gathered the coffee crop to that of the cook who ground the berries, to say nothing of the hand of the sailor who guided the ship which bore them to our shores. Again, from the hand of the laborer who sowed the corn, and that of the miller who ground it into flour, to the hand of the baker who made it into a roll. Then the hand of the farmer's wife who milked the cow, and the hand of the refiner who made the sugar; to say nothing of the many others who prepared his work for him, and I know not how many more.

How would it be, then, if I were to amuse myself by counting up all the hands that are wanted to furnish-

The sugar-refiner's manufactory,
The milkmaid's shed,
The baker's oven,
The miller's mill,
The laborer's plough,
The sailor's ship?

And even now is there nothing we have forgotten? Ah, yes! the most important of all the hands to you;-the hand which brings together for your benefit the fruits of the labor of all the others-the hand of your dear mother, always active, always ready, that hand which so often acts as yours when your own is awkward or idle.

Now, then, you see how you might really manage to do without those two comparatively helpless little paws of yours (although there is a thumb to each), without suffering too much for want of food. With such an army of hands at work, in every way, to furnish provision for that little mouth, there would not be much danger.


But cut off your cat's fore paws-oh dear! what am I saying? Suppose, rather, that she has not got any, and then count how many mice she will catch in a day. The milk you give her is another matter, remember. Like your cup of coffee, that is provided for her by others.

Believe me, if you were suddenly left all alone in a wood, like those pretty squirrels who nibble hazel-nuts so daintily, you would soon discover, from being thus thrown upon your own resources, that the mouth is not the only thing required for eating, and that whether it be a paw or a hand, there must always be a servant to go to market for Mr. Mouth, and to provide him with food.

Happily, we are not driven to this extremity. We take hold of our coffee-biscuit between the thumb and forefinger, and behold it is on its road-Open the mouth, and it is soon done!

But before we begin to chew, let us stop to consider a little.

The mouth is the door at which everything enters. Now, to every well-kept door there is a doorkeeper, or porter. And what is the office of a well-instructed porter? Well, he asks the people that present themselves, who they are, and what they have come for; and if he does not like their appearance, he refuses them admittance. We too, then, to be complete, need a porter of this sort in our mouths, and I am happy to say we have one accordingly. I wonder whether you know him? You look at me quite aghast! Oh, ungrateful child, not to know your dearest friend! As a punishment, I shall not tell you who he is to-day. I will give you till to-morrow to think about it.

Meanwhile, as I have a little time left, I will say one word more about what we are going to look at together. It would hardly be worth while to tell you this pretty story which we have begun, if from time to time we were not to extract a moral from it. And what is the moral of our history to-day?

It has more than one.

In the first place it teaches you, if you never knew it before, that you are under great obligations to other people, indeed to almost everybody, and most of all perhaps to people whom you may be tempted to look down upon. This laborer, with his coarse smock-frock and heavy shoes, whom you are so ready to ridicule, is the very person who, with his rough hand, has been the means of procuring for you half the good things you eat. That workman, with turned-up sleeves, whose dirty black fingers you are afraid of touching, has very likely blackened and dirtied them in your service. You owe great respect to all these people, I assure you, for they all work for you. Do not, then, go and fancy yourself of great consequence among them-you who are of no use in any way at present, who want everybody's help yourself, but as yet can help nobody.

Not that I mean to reproach you by saying this. Your turn has not come yet, and everybody began like you originally. But I do wish to impress upon you that you must prepare yourself to become some day useful to others, so that you may pay back the debts which you are now contracting.

Every time you look at your little hand, remember that you have its education to accomplish, its debts of honor to repay, and that you must make haste and teach it to be very clever, so that it may no longer be said of you, that you are of no use to anybody.

And then, my dear child, remember that a day will come, when the revered hands that now take care of your childhood-those hands which to-day are yours, as it were-will become weak and incapacitated by age. You will be strong, then, probably, and the assistance which you receive now, you must then render to her, render it to her as you have received it-that is to say, with your hands. It is the mother's hand which comes and goes without ceasing about her little girl now. It is the daughter's hand which should come and go around the old mother hereafter-her hand and not another's.

Here again, my child, the mouth is nothing without the hand. The mouth says, "I love," the hand proves it.


LETTER III.

THE TONGUE.

Now, about this doorkeeper, or porter, as we will call him, of the mouth. I do not suppose you have guessed who he is; so I am going to tell you.

The porter who keeps the door of the mouth is the sense of taste .

It is he who does the honors of the house so agreeably to proper visitors, and gives such an unscrupulous dismissal to unpleasant intruders. In other words, it is by his directions that we welcome so affectionately with tongue and lips whatever is good to eat, and spit out unhesitatingly whatever is unpleasant.

I could speak very ill of this porter if I chose; which would not be very pleasant for certain little gourmands that I see here, who think a good deal too much of him. But I would rather begin by praising him. I can make my exceptions afterwards.

In the history I am going to give you, my dear child, there is one thing you must never lose sight of, even when I do not allude to it; and that is, that everything we shall examine into, has been expressly arranged by God for the good and accommodation of our being in this world; just as a cradle is arranged by a mother for the comfort of her baby. We must look upon all these things, therefore, as so many presentsfrom the Almighty himself; and abstain from speaking ill of them, were it only out of respect for the hand which has bestowed them.

Moreover, there is a very easy plan by which we may satisfy ourselves of the usefulness and propriety of these gifts-namely, by considering what would become of us if we were deprived of any one of them.

Suppose, for instance, that you were totally deficient in the sense of taste, and that when you put a piece of cake into your mouth, it should create no more sensation in you than when you held it in your hand?

You would not have thought of imagining such a case yourself, I am aware; for it never comes into a child's head to think that things can be otherwise than as God has made them. And in that respect children are sometimes wiser than philosophers. Nevertheless, we will suppose this for once, and consider what would happen in consequence.

Well, in the first place, you would eat old mouldy cake with just the same relish as if it were fresh; and this mouldy cake, which now you carefully avoid because it is mouldy, is very unwholesome food, and would poison you were you to eat a great deal of it.

I give this merely as an instance, but it is one of a thousand. And although, with regard to eatables, you only know such as have been prepared either in shops or in your mamma's kitchen, still you must be aware there are many we ought to avoid, because they would do no good in our stomachs, and that we should often be puzzled to distinguish these from others, if the sense of taste did not warn us about them. You must admit, therefore, that such warnings are not without their value.

In short, it is a marvellous fact that what is unfit for food, is
almost always to be recognized as it enters the mouth, by its disagreeable taste; a further proof that God has thought of everything. Medicines, it is true, are unpleasant to the taste, and yet have to be swallowed in certain cases. But we may compare them to chimney-sweepers, who are neither pretty to look at, nor invited into the drawing-room; but who, nevertheless, are from time to time let into the grandest houses by the porters-though possibly with a grimace-because their services are wanted. And in the same way medicines have to be admitted sometimes-despite their unpleasantness-because they, too, have to work in the chimney. Taste does not deceive you about them, however; they are not intended to serve as food. If any one should try to breakfast, dine, and sup upon physic he would soon find this out.

Besides, I only said almost always, in speaking of unwholesome food making itself known to us by its nasty taste; for it is an unfortunate truth that men have invented a thousand plans for baffling their natural