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XVII

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

The conteluttony as asouls, in your last letter, only shows your ignorance One of the great, achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on that subject, so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled about it in the whole length and breadth of Europe This has largely been effected by concentrating all our efforts on gluttony of Delicacy, not gluttony of Excess Your patient’s ht have learned froood example She would be astonished - one day, I hope, will be - to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the fact that the quantities involved are small But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern? Glubose has this old woman well in hand She is a positive terror to hostesses and servants She is always turning fron and a smile "Oh please, pleaseall I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast" You see? Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognises as gluttony her deteret what she wants, however troubleso her appetite she believes that she is practising teives a little scream at the plate which some overworked waitress has set before her and says, "Oh, that’s far, far tooed, she would say she was doing this to avoid waste; in reality she does it because the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want

The real value of the quiet, unobtrusive hich Glubose has been doing for years on this old woed by the way in which her belly now dominates her whole life The woman is in what may be called the "All-I-want" state ofproperly boiled, or a slice of bread properly toasted But she never finds any servant or any friend who can do these sis "properly" - because her "properly" conceals an insatiable demand for the exact, and alines she remembers from the past; a past described by her as "the days when you could get good servants" but known to us as the days when her senses were more easily pleased and she had pleasures of other kinds which made her less dependent on those of the table Meanwhile, the daily disappointive notice and friendships are cooled If ever the Enemy introduces into her mind a faint suspicion that she is too interested in food, Glubose counters it by suggesting to her that she doesn’t s nice for her boy" In fact, of course, her greed has been one of the chief sources of his domestic discomfort for many years

Now your patient is his htly, on other fronts, you luttony Being a ht by the "All I want" caluttons with the help of their vanity They ought to beabout food, to pique the found the only restaurant in the tohere steaks are really "properly" cooked What begins as vanity can then be gradually turned into habit But, however you approach it, the great thing is to bring hience - it arettes - "puts him out", for then his charity, justice, and obedience are all at your mercy

Mere excess in food is much less valuable than delicacy Its chief use is as a kind of artillery preparation for attacks on chastity On that, as on every other subject, keep your man in a condition of false spirituality Never let hi what pride or lack of faith has delivered him into your hands when a si for the last twenty-four hours would show him whence your ammunition comes and thus enable him by a very little abstinence to imperil your lines of communication If he rand lie which we have lish humans believe, that physical exercise in excess and consequent fatigue are specially favourable to this virtue How they can believe this, in face of the notorious lustfulness of sailors and soldiers, may well be asked But we used the schoolmasters to put the story about - aae to deal with at the tail-end of a letter,

Your affectionate uncle

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