East, The, Amazed at Western Achievements—See Incredulity.
EASTER
The Lord is risen indeed,
He is here for your love, for your need—
Not in the grave, nor the sky,
But here where men live and die;
And true the word that was said:
"Why seek ye the living among the dead?"
Wherever are tears and sighs,
Wherever are children's eyes,
Where man calls man his brother,
And loves as himself another,
Christ lives! The angels said:
"Why seek ye the living among the dead?"
—Richard Watson Gilder.
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That Jesus lived, that Jesus died,
The ancient stories tell;
With words of wisdom, love, and truth,
That he could speak so well;
And all so great his work for man,
I hail him, brave and free,
The highest of heroic souls
Who lived and died for me.
That Jesus rose, that Jesus reigns,
The hearts that love him know;
They feel Him guide and strengthen them,
As on through life they go.
Rejoicing in His leadership,
The heavenward way I see,
And shall not stray if I can say,
He rose and reigns in me.
—A. Irvine Innes, The Christian Register.
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Eastern Customs—See Expectorating; Gestures and Uses of the Hands in the East; Tabooed Topics in the East.
Eating, a Guide in—See Affluence, The
Principle of.
EATING AND CHARACTER
Gluttony tends to cynicism. Coarseness
and extravagance of speech and manners go
hand in hand with dietetic excesses, as, for
cognate reasons, the repulsiveness of voracious
animals is generally aggravated by
a want of cleanliness. Among the natives of
the arctic regions, where climatic causes
make gluttony a pandemic vice, personal
cleanliness is an almost unknown virtue, and
Kane's anecdotes of polar household habits
depict a degree of squalor that would appal
a gorilla.
Habitual abstemiousness, on the other hand, is the concomitant of modesty, thrift, self-control, and evenness of temper, and is compatible with heroic perseverance, tho hardly with great energy of vital vigor. The dietetic self-denials of Luigi Cornaro, a Venetian nobleman of the sixteenth century, enabled him to outlive the third generation of his epicurean relatives. During the latter decades of his long life he boasts of having enjoyed a peace of mind unattainable by other means. Within the bounds of reason, occasional fasts are by no means incompatible with intellectual vigor, tho they are chiefly apt to stimulate the activity of abstruse speculations. There are intellectual voluptuaries whose enjoyment of mental triumphs in controversy or cogitation seem, for the time being, actually to deaden their craving for material food. Isaac Newton, on the track of a cosmic secret, would send back plate after plate of untasted meals. Percy Shelley, in the words of his sprightly biographer, indignantly refused to alloy the nectar of poetic inspiration with a "boarding-house soup," and in his creative moods rarely answered a dinner call without a sigh of regret. Benedict Spinoza, amid the parchment piles of his bachelor den, would fast for days in the ecstacy of his "Gott trunken"—"God-intoxicated"—meditations. Intermittent denutrition undoubtedly tends to clear off the cobwebs of the brain. (Text.)—Felix Oswald, Open Court.
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ECCENTRICITY
The Youth's Companion tells this incident about the peculiar moods of Turner, the artist, in the matter of selling his pictures:
At times nothing could induce him to part
with one of them, and at other times he
would receive a customer with the greatest
affability of voice and manner, and readily
settle upon the sum to be paid for one of his
treasures.
On one occasion, when he was offered one thousand pounds apiece for some old sketch-*books, he turned them over leaf by leaf before the eyes of the would-be purchaser, saying, "Well, would you really like to have them?"
Then, just as the man proceeded to take possession of the books, Turner, with a tantalizing "I dare say you would!" suddenly thrust them into a drawer and turned the key in the lock, leaving the customer dumb with indignation.
