" or
wine-shop, for a drink on the way. No such inclination came upon me
when my only beverage was water, or water plus a cup of coffee for
breakfast _only_ (no afternoon tea). Then I came in fresh,
usually finishing at the best pace of the day, enjoying the brisk
exercise in cool evening air. Physical work of this kind admits of
accurate measurement, and I was careful to equalise the average of
these experimental comparative fortnights.
The result is a firm conviction that the only beverage for obtaining
the maximum work out of any piece of human machinery is water, as pure
as possible; that all other beverages (including even tea and coffee),
ginger-beer, and all such concoctions as the so-called "temperance
drinks," are prejudicial to anybody not under medical treatment. To a
sound-bodied man there is no danger in drinking any quantity of cold
water in the hottest weather, provided _it is swallowed slowly_.
I have drunk as much as a dozen quarts in the course of a stiff
mountain climb when perspiring profusely, and never suffered the
slightest inconvenience, but, on the contrary, have found that the
perspiration promoted by frequent and copious libations at the
mountain streams enabled me to vigorously enjoy the roasting beat of
sun-rays striking so freely and fiercely as they do through the thin
air on the southward slopes of a high mountain.
I am not a teetotaler, and enjoy a glass of light wine, but always
take it as I sucked lollypops when a child, not because "it is good
for my complaint," or any such humbug, but simply because I am so low
in the scale of creation, as imperfect, as far from angelic, as to be
capable of occasionally enjoying a certain amount of purely sensual
indulgence, and of doing so from nothing higher than purely sensual
motives.
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