There is to me an odd pathos in the literature of vegetarianism.Iremember the day when I read these periodicals and pamphlets with all the zest of hunger and poverty, vigorously seeking to persuade myself that flesh was an altogether superfluous, and even a repulsive, food.If ever such things fall under my eyes nowadays, Iam touched with a half humorous compassion for the people whose necessity, not their will, consents to this chemical view of diet.
There comes before me a vision of certain vegetarian restaurants, where, at a minim outlay, I have often enough made believe to satisfy my craving stomach; where I have swallowed "savoury cutlet,""vegetable steak," and I know not what windy insufficiencies tricked up under specious names.One place do I recall where you had a complete dinner for sixpence--I dare not try to remember the items.
But well indeed do I see the faces of the guests--poor clerks and shopboys, bloodless girls and women of many sorts--all endeavouring to find a relish in lentil soup and haricot something-or-other.It was a grotesquely heart-breaking sight.
I hate with a bitter hatred the names of lentils and haricots--those pretentious cheats of the appetite, those tabulated humbugs, those certificated aridities calling themselves human food! An ounce of either, we are told, is equivalent to--how many pounds?--of the best rump-steak.There are not many ounces of common sense in the brain of him who proves it, or of him who believes it.In some countries, this stuff is eaten by choice; in England only dire need can compel to its consumption.Lentils and haricots are not merely insipid;frequent use of them causes something like nausea.Preach and tabulate as you will, the English palate--which is the supreme judge--rejects this farinaceous makeshift.Even as it rejects vegetables without the natural concomitant of meat; as it rejects oatmeal-porridge and griddle-cakes for a mid-day meal; as it rejects lemonade and ginger-ale offered as substitutes for honest beer.
What is the intellectual and moral state of that man who really believes that chemical analysis can be an equivalent for natural gusto?--I will get more nourishment out of an inch of right Cambridge sausage; aye, out of a couple of ounces of honest tripe;than can be yielded me by half a hundredweight of the best lentils ever grown.
