It is here, too, that
the slightest taint in meat, milk, or butter is immediately detected;
that rancid pastry from the pastrycook's is ruthlessly exposed; and that
the wiles of the fishmonger are set at naught by the judicious palate.
It is the special duty, in fact, of this last examiner to discover, not
whether food is positively destructive, not whether it is poisonous or
deleterious in nature, but merely whether it is then and there
digestible or undesirable.
As our state of health varies greatly from time to time, however, so do
the warnings of this last sympathetic adviser change and flicker. Sweet
things are always sweet, and bitter things always bitter; vinegar is
always sour, and ginger always hot in the mouth, too, whatever our state
of health or feeling. But our taste for roast loin of mutton, high game,
salmon cutlets, and Gorgonzola cheese varies immensely from time to
time, with the passing condition of our health and digestion. In
illness, and especially in sea-sickness, one gets the distaste carried
to the extreme: you may eat grapes or suck an orange in the chops of the
Channel, but you do not feel warmly attached to the steward who offers
you a basin of greasy ox-tail, or consoles you with promises of ham
sandwiches in half a minute. Under those two painful conditions it is
the very light, fresh, and stimulating things that one can most easily
swallow--champagne, soda-water, strawberries, peaches; not lobster
salad, sardines on toast, green Chartreuse, or hot brandy-and-water.
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