A Voice from the Stomach

I HAVE gently hinted that this don’t suit me, and that don’t please me; that this comes too late, and that too soon; that you give me too little of this, and too much of that, and, rather than complain without cause, I have worked off load after load, time after time, until I can bear it no longer-and I won’t. I hate to complain as much as you hate to hear me; but if you take me to be a sausage-mill, and able to chew up anything-from a rat to a sea-lion, or from sheet-iron beefsteak to India-rubber cheese-I say, again, that you are mistaken. ARSH July 14, 1863, page 54.28

Now I want to ask you, in all candor, what you take me to be? A stomach-a stomach to digest food-to make whatever you choose to give me into good, healthy blood, so that you may have the materials for building up a vigorous and healthy body, and which my neighbor, the heart, can receive, and circulate to every part of it, for that purpose. ARSH July 14, 1863, page 54.29

Now, let me ask why you-knowing me to be a stomach, and a stomach only-will impose upon me the duties of the teeth? ARSH July 14, 1863, page 54.30

Would you like to do another’s work, when it is quite as much as you want-and perhaps a little more-to do your own? No; I know you wouldn’t Then why do you seek to compel me? You don’t compel me? But I know you do; at least, you leave me but one alternative-to digest whatever you like to give me, in whatever shape it comes, or pass it to my next neighbor for him to work off; and rather than do that, I have many times cast up my accounts and thrown up the contract; and I want you to understand that if we are your servants, we are not your slaves-or, at least, we ought not to be-and as we are fellow-servants, we do not wish to be so mean as to shirk our part of the labor-to put it on the shoulders of the next beneath us-and it is your fault that the teeth do it, and they are not to blame. ARSH July 14, 1863, page 54.31

You ha’n’t time? Shame on you! Have you time to live-time to suffer all the pains that we necessarily inflict upon you? You find time to loll about; time to pick your teeth; time to smoke cigars, or chew tobacco; in short, you find time to do nothing, yet everything you shouldn’t. ARSH July 14, 1863, page 54.32

Then, again, do you suppose that I can make good blood out of anything? everything? or nothing? You don’t suppose it? One would think that you did suppose it, by the vast varieties of odds and ends you give me but which, often your dog would not eat! ... I want to be a reasonable kind of stomach, and a good servant, and it may be possible that if you are willing to do what is right by me, I may do my best to serve you. I do not want to be all the while grumbling, and giving you headaches, colic, dyspepsia, and, in short, nearly every disease to which men are subject, but wish to lead a peaceable life with you as well as with my neighbors. ARSH July 14, 1863, page 54.33

The STOMACH throws out a few suggestions as to how it thinks it ought to be treated, some of which certainly seem very reasonable and proper: ARSH July 14, 1863, page 55.1

As soon as you are out of bed, give me a glass of good water. ARSH July 14, 1863, page 55.2

In about half an hour after that I suppose you’ll want your breakfast, and I, some work to do, as I don’t believe in working with an empty stomach any more than you do, when I am well. You sit down, then, to breakfast, and give me something tender and nutritious, as meat, and something light and wholesome, as bread; and I suppose you would like a cup of coffee, but I don’t need anything of that sort. Be sure to be very moderate. Do not as the head of the firm, keep importing cargoes, because there happens to be plenty, nor keep stowing it down as though the warehouse was made of India-rubber; because, if you do, I have no alternative but to put it in some place that does not belong to me, or unship it by the way it came; neither of which is very pleasant either to yourself or to me. ARSH July 14, 1863, page 55.3

At dinner, also, be very moderate. Soup, if good, is not amiss; I prefer this to cold water, for the reason that cold of any kind lowers my temperature, so that I cannot work willingly until I am warmed up again. ARSH July 14, 1863, page 55.4

Then, after soup, take something I can do something with. Don’t load me with all sorts of messes and mixtures, from all parts of the world, merely because you would appear of importance to those who may be on a visit to you. I am in such a case, and at such a time, of much more importance to you than can possibly be your guest, and I wish you to remember that; and the moment I begin to be felt, let nothing tempt you to giving me more, for I have then as much as I know well what to do with. ARSH July 14, 1863, page 55.5

At supper be more careful, for as the day draws to a close, I, as well as other members of the firm, am weary with my day’s labor, and do not like to be taxed with additional work when I should be at rest; therefore, give me something very light to do, and something that does not want steam employed for its transit, that I may not torment you with horrid dreams, or tossing and unrefreshing sleep. What I have suffered from this cause no one can fully tell: for will you believe it, since last night I have been obliged to bear piles of indigestible stuff, that I could not dispose of in a morning, without fatiguing me with more labor than I ought to be called upon to perform all day. And then my next-door neighbor lays the blame at my door. If all sorts of diseases arise, as they do, from my being abused, do you not think the ‘time’ and attention well employed that is bestowed upon me? ARSH July 14, 1863, page 55.6

Yea, verily it is: and when you rise next morning with a violent headache, and a mouth uncomfortable, with a heaviness and languor having possession of your whole body, don’t you put the blame on me, for you are to blame, and you only. For, if you will overload and overtask and abuse me in all sorts of ways by all kinds of things then remember that sooner or later I shall serve you out-perhaps in some way you don’t expect of me. ARSH July 14, 1863, page 55.7

Then again, when you-my professed master-are doing comparatively nothing, do you suppose that I need just as much to supply me, and those who receive their supplies from me, as though you were a hard working man? ARSH July 14, 1863, page 55.8

Certainly not. ARSH July 14, 1863, page 55.9

Yet you have acquired the habit of eating much, when, perhaps, you worked at the hardest kind of labor, and follow the one habit, that of eating, after you have abolished the other habit, that of working. Now I say that you ought to be more consistent-you had. I must say, too, that I am always better, healthier, and stronger with a working man than I am with a man that don’t work. The worker always has good, plain, wholesome food, (except some very heavy bread sometimes,) and as soon as he has finished his meal, he don’t keep eating all sorts of foolish and indigestible messes, as some do. And moreover, with him who labors I am always at home, for his labors very much assist mine.-Sel. ARSH July 14, 1863, page 55.10