Note 23-* — INTRODUCTION.

To guard against “la gourmandise” of the second table, “provide each of your servants with a large pair of spectacles of the highest magnifying power, and never permit them to sit down to any meal without wearing them; they are as necessary, and as useful in a kitchen as pots and kettles: they will make a lark look as large as a FOWL, a goose as big as a SWAN, a leg of mutton as large as a hind quarter of beef; a twopenny loaf as large as a quartern;” and as philosophers assure you that pain even is only imaginary, we may justly believe the same of hunger; and if a servant who eats no more than one pound of food, imagines, by the aid of these glasses, that he has eaten three pounds, his hunger will be as fully satisfied—and the addition to your optician’s account, will soon be overpaid by the subtraction from your butcher’s and baker’s.