PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18,1880. EATING.

Patea Mail, 18 September 1880, Page 2

PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18,1880. EATING.

A xew idea is started by an American journal. It is that eating is a habit, not a necessity ; and that by progressive abstemiousness, a race of mankind may be “ evolved” that shall be able to sustain existence on pure water and air. This solves the labor question entirely. No more strikes; no more struggles; all will be arcadian, ethereal, spiritual, perhaps angelic. That is a “ future state” where humanity may revel in unadulterated joys. No poverty, no crime. The question of clothing would remain. Though the now race would never be hungry, it might bo cold: and work would have to be done, and wages earned and paid, for making garments. Clothing carries with it all the complex luxuries arising from taste and fashion. It would not be enough to go to an evening party arrayed in pure chastity and a hair-pin. Man must continue to be a clothes-horse whereon drapers and tailors may hang their garments. Women must continue to break their hearts with envy by dressing against each other. With envy would come jealousy, which would induce malice, which might lead to uncharitablencss. So that this American millennium of lost appetites and cold water, (without so much us a squeeze of lemon in it) would hardly realise all the beatitudes of an etherialiscd existence. Besides all this, is not eating the greatest luxury in life ? Drinking is an imperfect substitute, for have not some inventors tried to live by drinking, and did they look like walking angels ? This American theory has a weak place somewhere. The idea of living on air and water needs working out, and it can be done nowhere so well as in America,