Mat

“ A mat in a large upper room, shared with several others, serves him in winter as a place of repose for the night; but during the summer he frequently sleeps out in the open air, making his filled water-barrel his pillow. ”

“ Now we come to the Mat Bed, which is so much used in the warmer parts of the world, where the earth is dry, and the air so warm that nothing is required but the slightest possible protection from the soil. ”

“ Fresh water from the brook, as clear as ever ran;
And twice within the day, when the ground is wet with dew,
I bring thee draughts of milk—warm milk it is and new.
“Thy limbs will shortly be twice as stout as they are now;
Then I’ll yoke thee to my cart, like a pony to the plow;
My playmate thou shalt be, and when the wind is cold,
Our hearth shall be thy bed, our house shall be thy fold. ”

“ With our future food, he says, itself prepared in liquid form from the chemical elements of the atmosphere, pepsinated or half-digested in advance, and sucked up through a glass tube from a tin can, what need shall we have of teeth, or stomachs even? They may go, along with our muscles and our physical courage, while, challenging even more and more our proper admiration, will grow the gigantic domes of our crania, arching over our spectacled eyes, and animating our flexible little lips to those floods of learned and ingenious talk which will constitute our most congenial occupation. ”

“ For maintaining muscular strength, therefore, it must be more valuable in an equal proportion.
3. Bone material and Saline matter.—Of these mineral constituents, as they may be called, of the animal body, a thousand pounds of bran, whole meal and fine flour, contain respectively,—
So that in regard to this important part of our food, necessary to all living animals, but especially to the young who are growing, and to the mother who is giving milk—the whole meal is three times more nourishing than the fine flour. ”

“ My mother, who was a resolute woman, began to walk about, and the baby, having been given milk, grew quiet. We boys were set to work arranging the mattresses and blankets and all the material my father had by degrees made ready for this hour of need. There was food enough for a stay of many days, and as to wine, there was of that an abundance, and also a barrel of good water. ”

“ Those columnar masses, which seem to you as if rising out of a mass of ice below, are results of art, and processes are going on within them connected with the formation and perfection of their food. The brilliant-colored fluids are the results of such operations as on the earth would be performed in your laboratories, or more properly in your refined culinary apparatus, for they are connected with their system of nourishment. ”

“ As of course you know, different food materials contain different qualities. Some give us the fat necessary for warmth; others, nitrogenous qualities, which form flesh; still others, minerals, such as lime, soda, etc., etc., needed for bone and muscle. ”

“ You wonder how everything could have been prepared in so few utensils. When you eat, the wonder ceases: everything might have been cooked in one pail. It is a noble meal; and nobly is it disposed of by these amateur savages, sitting about upon logs and roots of trees. ”

“ The better balance of ingredients, and the greater nervous stimulation, are advantages which hold here as before. If facts are asked for, we may name as one, the comparative ease with which the stomach disposes of a French dinner, enormous in quantity but extremely varied in materials. Few will contend that an equal weight of one kind of food, however well cooked, could be digested with as much facility. ”

“ One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;" and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plough along in spite of every obstacle. ”

“ Then the abdomen is its kitchen, preparing from all things in its indefinite stores one universal dish—even the blood of life, to be served in repasts for the spiritual man; the viand of viands, varying from hour to hour, and suited with more than mathematic truth to the appetite and constitution of the eater. ”

“ To underestimate one's thirst, to pass a given landmark to the right or left, to find a dry spring where one looked for running water—there is no help for any of these things. ”

“ Women bring out mats, such as are used for sleeping on, and spread them in the open place in the middle of the village, and over these good clean mats. When these are ready, those who have been at work sit on the heap of mats and begin the wailing, so that people at a distance may know that the time has come to swathe the corpse. ”

“ These mats are not only used to lie upon, but are also worn by the women over their shoulders as a protection in wet weather. They are especially useful, as I have myself found, when sleeping out in the open in wet weather. ”

“ What physicians call the perspirable matter, is that vapour which passes off from our bodies, from the lungs, and through the pores of the skin. The quantity of this is said to be five-eighths of what we eat. ”

“ If made in the proper manner and from suitable material, bread is, with the exception of milk, the article best fitted for the nourishment of the body, and if need be, can supply the place of all other foods. ”

“ The recess beneath the counter in which his flock mattress was thrust, looked like a grave. ”

“ take a strict view of their excrements, and, from the colour, the odour, the taste, the consistence, the crudeness or maturity of digestion, form a judgment of their thoughts and designs; because men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent, as when they are at stool, which he found by frequent experiment; ”

“ These are all that relate to cooking. They lie upon mats with their feet towards the fire, on each side of it. They do not sit much upon any thing raised up, but, for the most part, sit on the ground or squat on their ankles. ”

“ He could eat anything, no matter how loathsome or indigestible; and, once eaten, the juices of his stomach extracted the last least particle of nutriment; and his blood carried it to the farthest reaches of his body, building it into the toughest and stoutest of tissues. ”

“ The thick clay walls had been finished on the inside by the deft palms of Indian women, and had that irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand. ”

“ This mesa plain had an appearance of great antiquity, and of incompleteness; as if, with all the materials for world-making assembled, the Creator had desisted, gone away and left everything on the point of being brought together, on the eve of being arranged into mountain, plain, plateau. The country was still waiting to be made into a landscape. ”

“ There was nothing exhilarating, nothing to give promise of pleasure or amusement. As our gallant brigantine glided gaily on, sending the sparkling foam from her bows through the tiny wavelets of the ocean, which glittered in the radiance of a blue and cloudless sky, and her sails filled with the fresh sea breeze, these feelings rapidly wore off. Now, on either side, appeared a fleet of fishing canoes, the wild songs of their naked crews coming across the water, as with rugged sails of matting lolling at their ease, they steered towards the shore. ”

“ Saint Antoine had been, that morning, a vast dusky mass of scarecrows heaving to and fro, with frequent gleams of light above the billowy heads, where steel blades and bayonets shone in the sun. A tremendous roar arose from the throat of Saint Antoine, and a forest of naked arms struggled in the air like shrivelled branches of trees in a winter wind: all the fingers convulsively clutching at every weapon or semblance of a weapon that was thrown up from the depths below, no matter how far off. ”

“ The old grey-beards, plodding slowly round the ring, and stamping on the soil with their aged feet, presented a great contrast to the younger and wilder men, who capered and pranced about, sometimes outside the circle, waving their tanghis in the air, and every now and then leaping up to the slain buffalo, and dipping their axes into its blood, and then back again, dancing more wildly than ever, round and round from west to east, till the eye ached to behold the perpetual motion of this animated wheel. ”

“ Cooking is going on, appetites growing keener every day. No lowlander can appreciate the mountain appetite, and the facility with which heavy food called “grub” [Pg 106] is disposed of. Eating, walking, resting, seem alike delightful, and one feels inclined to shout lustily on rising in the morning like a crowing cock. ”

“ These seven million mouths must be fed daily and hourly. Their food is light and air. Man is not only fed and nourished through the portal of his mouth, but through all the pores of his body, by drawing in nutriment from the surrounding elements, even from the viewless air.
[Pg 765] These little mouths also need moisture. This fact is revealed to the senses through the medium of the nerves; for, how grateful to the dry, parched skin, is a bath of cold water! or, if the blood is in a “low state,”—impoverished by disease,—let it be a tepid bath. Let it feel comfortable and grateful to the user. ”

“ I have long been lame in my feet, and I have got just one grain, and am carrying it to my children. The King's sons are sitting in the cellar eating their food; you go and fetch a grain from there; why should you take mine from me? ”

“ The lofty of the land whose pampered stomachs have turned with loathing from more dainty food in sultry seasons, have welcomed the simplicity of milk and flummery, as the advocate of native charms would greet the smilings of a rustic beauty, when the meretricious fair of fashion would be passed by, neglected. ”

“ A bowl of bread and milk in the middle of the day is to be had, almost for the asking, and it not only serves to quench thirst, but what strength it gives is sooner felt than if the food was of a more solid nature. ”

“ These larches are at the very end of a long tongue into which the mountain one started on has somehow separated, and it is under them that one eats one's dinner of hard boiled egg and bread and butter, and sits staring, while one does so, in much astonishment at the view. ”

“ The mountain air, invigorating though bland, the exercise, the absence of care, the excellence of the food, which comprised fresh figs, a tree or two of tolerable sweetness having been found, the milk of the cocoa-nut, the birds, the eggs, the bread-fruit, &c., all contributed their share to render the meal memorable. ”

“ It was because I loved greatly that I was the great fighter.
Sometimes I think that the story of man is the story of the love of woman. This memory of all my past that I write now is the memory of my love of woman. Ever, in the ten thousand lives and guises, I loved her. I love her now. My sleep is fraught with her; my waking fancies, no matter whence they start, lead me always to her. There is no escaping her, that eternal, splendid, ever-resplendent figure of woman. ”

“ THE RICE
It is our very teeth that we sink in the earth, in this plow that we plant there; and even now our bread eats there as we shall eat. At home, in the cold north, it is the sun who kneads our bread; he ripens the field as the open fire cooks our pancakes and roasts our meat. ”

“ In fine, Men, Beasts, and whatever you may imagine to have any protuberance above the level of the Sea. This new, delightful, and most instructive form of Map, or Wooden Country, you are to look upon either Horizontally or sidelong, and it affords equally a very pleasant object.
Some Anatomical Observations of Milk found in Veins, instead of Blood; and of Grass, found in the Wind-pipes of some Animals. A curious Person wrote not long since from Paris, that there they had, in the House of a Physician, newly open'd a Mans Vein, wherein they found Milk, instead of Blood. ”

“ How savoury is the coarse food! How we linger at table enjoying our rest! How soundly we sleep on a hard bed! If you only want to get to a place you may ride in a post-chaise; if you want to travel you must go on foot. ”

“ When his mouth is touched with grain as food for the first time, they put a sword, a pen, a book, food and other articles, being the symbols of different professions, on the ground and place the child in front of them. ”

“ If anything is more simple than the cooking it is the preparation of the bed. A small circular spot is cleared and an armful of grass, if any exists, is spread over it; the blankets are laid on the grass, and the bed is made. ”

“ Sometimes a traveller hears this clapping proceeding out of the immensely high and thick grass which encloses the road, and he is by this sound alone made aware of the presence of a human being. Their food consists entirely of grain, which they greatly prefer to meat, even when this is offered to them. ”

“ The mastication of food is usually accomplished by a mill in the mouth. And absence of a masticatory apparatus at the entrance of the food-canal is usually compensated by a mill within the body, as the gizzard of a bird, or by strong chemical solvents as shown in the snake. ”

“ The fat may, in the mythical sky, be the milk of the morning dawn, or the rain of the cloud, or the snee, or the dew; as soon as the thunderbolt touches the fat of the clouds, or of the snee, or as soon as the sunbeam touches the milk of the dawn, the sun, riches, and fortune come forth. ”

“ A slop-bowl full of strong tea, together with bread, and butter, and eggs, was produced for him in the morning, and he expected that at whatever hour he might arrive in the evening, some food should be presented to him wherewith to satisfy the cravings of Nature ”

“ Then came the Fairies, merry but noiseless, bringing skillets and pots and dishes and pans and all the tools necessary to prepare food and to comfort a mortal. With these they filled cupboard and fireplace, finally placing a stout suit of wool clothing on the stool by the bedside. ”

“ Food became my favorite mind-game as my stomach gradually healed. We pursued the canteen route quite frequently throughout the day, and each time I would gaze at the treats, yearning for a taste of something. ”