Note 378 — Chapter V · SURNAMES OF OCCUPATION. (TOWN).
Reading edition
We are all familiar with the old adage,
‘After dinner sit awhile,
After supper walk a mile’:
it often used to puzzle me that this last line, while speaking from a medical point of view, should so calmly give up the general question as to whether suppers were or were not advisable as a part of the domestic régime. When we remember, however, that the couplet doubtless arose in a day when dinner was at twelve and supper at five or six, we can better understand its intent.