第26章 THE VOYAGE(14)

Francis on my side;but this received an immediate answer:"She scorned to overcharge gentlemen;her house had been always frequented by the very best gentry of the island;and she had never had a bill found fault with in her life,though she had lived upwards of forty years in the house,and within that time the greatest gentry in Hampshire had been at it;and that lawyer Willis never went to any other when he came to those parts.That for her part she did not get her livelihood by travelers,who were gone and away,and she never expected to see them more,but that her neighbors might come again;wherefore,to be sure,they had the only right to complain."She was proceeding thus,and from her volubility of tongue seemed likely to stretch the discourse to an immoderate length,when I suddenly cut all short by paying the bill.

This morning our ladies went to church,more,I fear,from curiosity than religion;they were attended by the captain in a most military attire,with his cockade in his hat and his sword by his side.So unusual an appearance in this little chapel drew the attention of all present,and probably disconcerted the women,who were in dishabille,and wished themselves dressed,for the sake of the curate,who was the greatest of their beholders.

While I was left alone I received a visit from Mr.Francis himself,who was much more considerable as a farmer than as an inn-holder.Indeed,he left the latter entirely to the care of his wife,and he acted wisely,I believe,in so doing.As nothing more remarkable passed on this day I will close it with the account of these two characters,as far as a few days'residence could inform me of them.If they should appear as new to the reader as they did to me,he will not be displeased at finding them here.This amiable couple seemed to border hard on their grand climacteric;nor indeed were they shy of owning enough to fix their ages within a year or two of that time.They appeared to be rather proud of having employed their time well than ashamed of having lived so long;the only reason which I could ever assign why some fine ladies,and fine gentlemen too,should desire to be thought younger than they really are by the contemporaries of their grandchildren.Some,indeed,who too hastily credit appearances,might doubt whether they had made so good a use of their time as I would insinuate,since there was no appearance of anything but poverty,want,and wretchedness,about their house;nor could they produce anything to a customer in exchange for his money but a few bottles of wind,and spirituous liquors,and some very bad ale,to drink;with rusty bacon and worse cheese to eat.But then it should be considered,on the other side,that whatever they received was almost as entirely clear profit as the blessing of a wreck itself;such an inn being the very reverse of a coffee-house;for here you can neither sit for nothing nor have anything for your money.

Again,as many marks of want abounded everywhere,so were the marks of antiquity visible.Scarce anything was to be seen which had not some scar upon it,made by the hand of Time;not an utensil,it was manifest,had been purchased within a dozen years last past;so that whatever money had come into the house during that period at least must have remained in it,unless it had been sent abroad for food,or other perishable commodities;but these were supplied by a small portion of the fruits of the farm,in which the farmer allowed he had a very good bargain.In fact,it is inconceivable what sums may be collected by starving only,and how easy it is for a man to die rich if he will but be contented to live miserable.

Nor is there in this kind of starving anything so terrible as some apprehend.It neither wastes a man's flesh nor robs him of his cheerfulness.The famous Cornaro's case well proves the contrary;and so did farmer Francis,who was of a round stature,had a plump,round face,with a kind of smile on it,and seemed to borrow an air of wretchedness rather from his coat's age than from his own.

The truth is,there is a certain diet which emaciates men more than any possible degree of abstinence;though I do not remember to have seen any caution against it,either in Cheney,Arbuthnot,or in any other modern writer or regimen.

Nay,the very name is not,I believe,in the learned Dr.James's Dictionary;all which is the more extraordinary as it is a very common food in this kingdom,and the college themselves were not long since very liberally entertained with it by the present attorney and other eminent lawyers in Lincoln's-inn-hall,and were all made horribly sick by it.

But though it should not be found among our English physical writers,we may be assured of meeting with it among the Greeks;for nothing considerable in nature escapes their notice,though many things considerable in them,it is to be feared,have escaped the notice of their readers.The Greeks,then,to all such as feed too voraciously on this diet,give the name of HEAUTOFAGI,which our physicians will,I suppose,translate MENTHAT EAT THEMSELVES.

As nothing is so destructive to the body as this kind of food,so nothing is so plentiful and cheap;but it was perhaps the only cheap thing the farmer disliked.Probably living much on fish might produce this disgust;for Diodorus Siculus attributes the same aversion in a people of Ethiopia to the same cause;he calls them the fish-eaters,and asserts that they cannot be brought to eat a single meal with the Heautofagi by any persuasion,threat,or violence whatever,not even though they should kill their children before their faces.