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

the contrary, what your mother asks you to eat, my dear little epicure, is sure to be something which contains the indispensable supplies for which your blood is craving; for people knew all about this by experience long before they could explain the why and the wherefore. But now that you are so much better informed than even the most learned men were a century ago, pouting and wry faces at table are no longer excusable, and I should be sadly ashamed of you if I should hear you continued to make them.

And this is what I was more particularly thinking of just now, when I took up my pen again. No doubt it is very amusing to be able to look clearly into one's frame, and see what goes on inside, but the amusement anything affords is the least important part of it; you have begun to find this out already, and you will find it out more and more every day. What seems to me one of the great advantages of the study we have begun together is, that at every step you take you will meet with the most practical and useful instruction, as well as the most unanswerable reasons for doing what your parents ask you to do every day.

To obey without knowing why is certainly possible, and may be done happily enough. But we obey more readily and easily when we understand the reason for doing so; and a duty which one can satisfy oneself about, forces itself upon one as a sort of necessity. And what can throw a stronger light on our duties than a thorough acquaintance with ourselves?

It is upwards of two thousand two hundred years ago (and that is not yesterday, you must own!) since one of the greatest minds of the world-Socrates-never forget that name-taught his disciples, as a foundation precept, this apparently simple maxim, "Know thyself." He meant this, it is true, in a much higher sense than we are aiming at in these conversations of ours, but his rule is so practical, that although you have only as yet taken a mere peep into one small corner of self-knowledge, you find, if I am not much mistaken, that your heart has beaten once or twice rather faster than it did before. Was I wrong, in saying from the beginning, that we become better as we grow in knowledge? Is it not true that you have felt more tenderly than ever towards her who nourished you with her milk, since I explained to you the value of milk; and that you have kissed your mother's hand all the more lovingly since you heard my history of the hand? To tell you the truth, if you had not done so, I should have been dissatisfied both with you and myself.

And wait! While we are talking thus, another thought has come into my head about hands and nurses, which I must tell you of.

There is something of the nurse, my child, in those who take the best fruits of their intellect and heart, and transform them, as it were, into milk, in order that your infant soul may receive a nourishment it will be able to digest without too much effort. In this way their very soul enters into you, and it is but fair that you should reward them as they deserve. Young as you are, too, you have a recompense in your power: one more acceptable even than Academic prizes-of which it is indispensable not to be too avaricious-you can give them your love.

Besides, it is not only hands but heads that are at work for you, and of these many more than you suppose; and your debt of gratitude is as much due to the one as to the other.

Perhaps my first letter may have led you to suppose that I was inclined to laugh at what I called learned men; and they are perhaps a little to blame for not thinking often enough about little girls; but nevertheless these men are of the greatest use to them in an indirect way. You owe them much, therefore, and without them could have known nothing of what I am teaching you. It is very grand for us, is it not, to know that there is phosphorus and lime in our teeth? But it took generations of learned men, and investigations and discoveries without end, and ages of laborious study, to extract from nature this secret which you have learnt in five minutes. And whatever others you may learn hereafter, remember that it is the same story with all. While profiting, therefore, at your ease, by all these conquests of science, I would have you hold in grateful recollection those who have gained them at so much cost to themselves: almost always at the expense of their fortune, sometimes at the peril of their lives.

There they are, observe, a little knot of men with no sort of outward pretension. They speak a language which scares children away. They weigh dirty little powders in apothecaries' scales; steep sheets of copper in acid-water; and watch air-bubbles passing through bent glass tubes, some of which are as dangerous as cannon balls. They scrape old bones, and slice scraps no bigger than a pin's head. They keep theireyes fixed for hours upon things they are examining through microscopes of a dozen glasses, and when you go to see what they are looking at, you find nothing at all. To see them at work, in what they call their laboratories, you would say that they were a set of madmen. But at the end, it is found, some fine day, that they have changed the face of the earth; have worked revolutions before which emperors and kings bow in respect; have enriched nations by millions at a time; have revealed to the human race, divine laws of which it had hitherto been ignorant; finally, have furnished the means of teaching little boys and girls some very curious things, which will make them more agreeable as well as reasonable. And this is a benefit not to be despised, since these children are destined one day to become fathers and mothers, and so to govern the next generation; and the better they themselves are instructed, the better this will be done.

But now let us go back to the poor teeth, whom we seem to have forgotten altogether. However, we knew very well that they would not run away meantime.

I told you before that it was their business to dress and prepare whatever was presented to them, but the reception they bestow is not one which would suit every body's taste, for it consists in being made mince-meat of And in order to do their work in the best way possible they divide their labor; some cut up, others tear, and others pound.

First, there are those flat teeth in front of the two jaws, just below the nose. Touch yours with the tip of your finger; you will find that they terminate in sharp-edged blades, like knives. These are called
incisors, from the Latin word incidere, which means to cut, and it is with them we bite bread and apples, where the first business is to cut. It is with the same teeth that lazy little girls bite their thread, when they will not take the trouble to find their scissors; and, by the by, this is a very bad trick, because by rubbing them one against another in this manner we wear them out, and, as you will soon discover, worn-out teeth never grow again.

The next sort are those little pointed teeth, which come after the
incisors, on each side of both jaws. You will easily find them; and if you press against them a little, you will feel their points. If we call the first set the knives of the mouth, we may call these its forks. They serve to pierce whatever requires to be torn, and they are called canine teeth, from the Latin word canis , a dog, because dogs make great use of them in tearing their food. They place their paws upon it, and plunging the canine teeth into it, pull off pieces by a jerk of the head. Look into the mouth of papa's dog: you will recognize these teeth by their rather curved points. They are longer than the rest, and are called fangs. I do not know, after all, why they have chosen to name these teeth canine , as all carnivorous animals have the same fangs, and in the lion, the tiger, and many other species, they are much more developed and sharper than in the dog. In cats they are like little nails. However, the name is given, and we cannot alter it.

The last teeth, which are placed at the back of the jaw, are called molars, from the Latin word mola , which means a millstone.

You must be prepared to meet with several Latin words as we go on; but never mind; this will give you the opportunity of learning a little Latin, and so of keeping your brother in order, if he ever looks down upon you because he is learning Latin at school. Formerly, all learned men wrote in Latin, and as they ruled supreme in all such subjects as those we are discussing, they gave to everything such names as they pleased, without consulting the public, who did not just then trouble their heads about the matter. Now they give Greek names, which can hardly be called an improvement; but if they ever wish to attract the attention of little girls they must translate their hard words into our own language.

To return to our grinders: they perform the same office as a miller's millstone; that is to say, they grind everything that comes in their way. These teeth have flat, square tops, with little inequalities on the surface, which you can feel the moment you lay your finger on them. These are the largest and strongest of the three sets, and with them we even crack nuts, when we prefer the risk of breaking our teeth to the trouble of looking for the nut-crackers!

Now, I will answer for it that you cannot explain to me why we always place what is hard to break between the molars, and never employ the incisors in the work? And yet everybody does this alike-from the child to the grown-up man-and all equally without thinking of what they are doing.

I will tell you the reason, however, if you will first tell me why, when you are going to snip off the tip of your thread (which offers very little resistance), you do it with the point of your scissors; whereas you put any tough thing which is likely to resist strongly (a match, for instance) close up to their hinge; particularly if you have no scruple about spoiling the scissors, by the way!

If you were a grown-up lad, and I were teaching you natural philosophy, I should have here a fine opportunity for explaining what is called
the theory of the lever . But I think the theory of the lever would frighten you; so we must get out of the difficulty in some other way.

I find, however, that I have been joking so much as I went along, that I have but little space left, and feel quite ashamed of myself. We seem quite unlucky over these teeth.

I have already been scolded by people who are not altogether wrong in accusing me of losing my time in chattering, first of one thing and then of another. They complain