It appears that babies, after all,
do not make the daintiest morsels. Tender they are, of course, but,
being immature, they have not the rich flavor of a youthful adult. This
seems reasonable. Veal is tender, but can it be favorably compared with
beef? The cases are parallel. The embossed young men consider babies
excellent for _entrees_, but for roasts there is nothing like plump
maidens in their teens. Men of twenty are not bad eating. When older,
they are invariably boiled. Commenting upon the audience, the critics
did not consider it appetizing; and, strange as it may appear, I felt
somewhat hurt by the remark, for who is not vain enough to wish to look
good enough to eat? Fancy being shipwrecked off the Fiji Islands, and
discarded by cannibals as a tough subject, while your companions are
literally killed with attention! Can you not imagine, that, under such
circumstances, a peculiar jealousy of the superior tenderness of your
friends would be a thorn in the flesh, rendering existence a temporary
burden? If we lived among people who adored squinting, should we not all
take to it, and cherish it as the apple of our eye? And if we fell among
anthropophagi, would not our love of approbation make us long to be as
succulent as young pigs? What glory to escape from the jaws of death, if
the jaws repudiate us? So long as memory holds a seat in this distracted
brain, I shall entertain unpleasant feelings toward the embossed young
gentlemen who did not sigh to fasten their affections--otherwise their
teeth--on me.
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