Page:Everyday Luncheons.djvu/12

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Everyday Luncheons

Properly to perform its various duties, the body requires energy, and energy comes from food. A furnace supplied at noon with two or three cinders and a shovel full of ashes, would not be expected to heat the house sufficiently during the afternoon. Yet a woman hopes to finish her day creditably on the fuel supplied at noon by cream puffs, ice-cream soda, or nothing at all.

Too much cannot be said in favor of regular hours for meals. Midway between breakfast and dinner there should be a nourishing luncheon, not elaborate in quality or quantity, but sufficient. Expensive machinery is oiled at stated intervals. Furnaces are supplied with coal each day at approximately the same hours. The jewellers who deal in expensive watches will advise winding the watch at exactly the same hour each night. Does not the human body mean as much to the soul that dwells in it as a watch or a furnace?

People who do not take time to eat and sleep, presently are obliged to take time to die. People who, from false notions of economy, live upon improper food, are shortly put to the greater expense of a funeral. It is better to spend the money on porter-house steaks, fresh vegetables, fruits and eggs, than upon wreaths and "gates ajar." The one who leads the procession, with his friends riding behind him in carriages