“And now that you know how happily circumstanced I am as to environment your doctorial demand is for something as to the behavior of the organs and nerves which we call the physical man. Well, I can't tell you much. I do not rise and walk half a block without that trigger being pulled, but the explosion is not dynamite, rather poor black powder, I should say. If I walk half a dozen blocks I stop a half a dozen times, and once or twice nibble at a precious pellet of nitro. At night I am wakened as of yore, but the agonizing, crushing pains do not come every night. ... I eat prunes and bran biscuit and coffee for breakfast; a bit of cooked fruit (and that in this land of oranges and alligator pears and ripe raspberries!), chicken and green peas, and bran biscuit and tea for lunch; a couple of green vegetables and bran biscuit and a small black, for dinner. And all this I write with a supreme sense of virtue, which Simon Stylites or St. Benedict could not more than parallel. As to smoking--a pipe, generous in size but of the mildest possible tobacco, after breakfast. A mild, large cigar after lunch, and pause here and worship--no cigar after dinner. (But this latter is a Lenten innovation. I would not have you think I am preparing for immediate ascension.)”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
* * * * * GOOD STRONG USEFUL CONGOU, 2s. 6d., 2s. 8d., 2s. 10d., 3s., and 3s. 4d. PURE COFFEES, 1s., 1s. 2d., 1s. 4d., 1s. 6d. _A PRICE-CURRENT FREE._ Pure Preserving and other Sugars at Market Prices. * * * * * ALL GOODS SENT CARRIAGE FREE WITHIN EIGHT MILES OF LONDON. Teas and Coffees _Carriage Free_ to all England, if to value of 40s. * * * * * PHILLIPS AND COMPANY, TEA MERCHANTS, KING WILLIAM STREET, CITY, LONDON, E.C.
Sources: The passage is from Franklin K. Lane, The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Francatelli, A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes of 1852, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — moss cloth, pear stamp.