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BOILED GRAIN.
England must have her tea, and the children generally share itwith her. As tea contains no nourishment, either for young orold, there must of course be bread and butter to eat along with it.The quartern loaf will not go far among a family of hungrychildren, and if we add the cost of tea, sugar, butter, and milk,the expense of one meal will be more than would be sufficient tofill their bellies with wholesome food three times a-day.
There is reason to believe that one half the bread consumed inEngland is used to tea, without one hearty meal ever being madeof it. The higher ranks use tea as a luxury, while the lowerorders make a diet of it. I had lately occasion to see a strikinginstance of this in a family, that was represented to me as indistress for want of bread. I sent them a little money, and wasinformed that they ran with it directly to the tea-shop.
To a heavy, sluggish, phlegmatic man, a moderate use of teamay not prove pernicious ; but where there is a debilitatedstomach and an irritability of fibre, it never fails to do much hurt.With many it has the effect to prevent sleep.
Tea will induce a total change of constitution in the people ofthis country. Indeed, it has gone a great way towards effectingthat evil already. A debility, and consequent irritability of fibre,are become so common, that not only women, but even men, areaffected with them. That class of diseases, which, for want of abetter name, we call nervous, has made almost a complete conquestof the one sex, and is malting haety strides towards vanquishingthe other.
Did women know the train of diseases induced by debility, andhow disagreeable these diseases render them to the other sex, thevwould shun tea as the most deadly poison. No man can love awoman eaten up with vapours, or washed down with diseasesarising from relaxation.
It is not tea taken as a beverage after a full meal, or in acrowded assembly, that I so much condemn, though I thinksomething as elegant and less pernicious might he substituted inits place. The mischief occasioned by tea arises chiefly from itsbeing substituted for solid food. This is so much the case atpresent, that, had I time to spare, I think it could not be betteremployed than in writing against this destructive drug.
BOILED GRAIN.
Though farinaceous substances, of one kind or another, make anecessary part of the food of man, yet there can be no reason whysuch substances should always assume the name and form of bread.Many of them are more wholesome, and not less agreeable, inother forms. Bread is often used merely to save the trouble ofcookery ; and, being portable, is the most convenient article ofdiet for carrying abroad.
It does not, however, admit of a doubt, that more grain is eatenboiled, though not in this country, than is made into bread ; andthat this mode of cookery is the most wholesome. Simple boilingprecludes all adulteration, and is an operation much less laboriousand artificial than baking.