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women of the world—often far nicer people than the proph-
ets who preached abstention—continually spoke sneeringly
of the new doctrinaire laws, and were believed to set them
aside in secret, though they dared not do so openly. Small
wonder, then, that the more human among the student
classes were provoked by the touch-not, taste-not, handle-
not precepts of their rulers, into questioning much that they
would otherwise have unhesitatingly accepted.
One sad story is on record about a young man of prom-
ising amiable disposition, but cursed with more conscience
than brains, who had been told by his doctor (for as I have
above said disease was not yet held to be criminal) that he
ought to eat meat, law or no law. He was much shocked and
for some time refused to comply with what he deemed the
unrighteous advice given him by his doctor; at last, howev-
er, finding that he grew weaker and weaker, he stole secretly
on a dark night into one of those dens in which meat was
surreptitiously sold, and bought a pound of prime steak. He
took it home, cooked it in his bedroom when every one in
the house had gone to rest, ate it, and though he could hard-
ly sleep for remorse and shame, felt so much better next
morning that he hardly knew himself.
Three or four days later, he again found himself irre-
sistibly drawn to this same den. Again he bought a pound
of steak, again he cooked and ate it, and again, in spite of
much mental torture, on the following morning felt him-
self a different man. To cut the story short, though he never
went beyond the bounds of moderation, it preyed upon his
mind that he should be drifting, as he certainly was, into