The History of a Mouthful of Bread | Page 7

in such a manner on your hand that it can face each of the other fingers one after another, or all together, as you please; and by this we are enabled to grasp, as if with a pair of pincers, whatever object, whether large or small. Our hands owe their perfection of usefulness to this happy arrangement, which has been bestowed on no other animal, except the monkey, our nearest neighbor.
I may even add, while we are about it, that it is this which distinguishes the hand from a paw or a foot. Our feet, which have other things to do than to pick up apples or lay hold of a fork, our feet have also each five fingers, but the largest cannot face the others; it is not a thumb, therefore, and it is because of this that our feet are not hands. Now the monkey has thumbs on the four members corresponding to our arms and legs, and thus we may say that he has hands at the end of his legs as well as of his arms. Nevertheless, he is not on that account better off than we are, but quite the contrary. I will explain this to you presently.
To return to our subject. You see that it was necessary, before saying anything about the mouth, to consider the hand, which is the mouth's purveyor. Before the cook lights the fires the maid must go to market, must she not? And it is a very valuable maid that we have here: what would become of us without her?
If we were in the habit of giving thought to everything, we should never even gather a nut without being grateful to the Providence which has provided us with the thumb, by means of which we are able to do it so easily.
But however well I may have expressed it, I am by no means sure, after all, that I have succeeded in showing you clearly, how absolutely necessary our hand is to us in eating, and why it has the honor to stand at the beginning of the history of what we eat.
It still appears to you, I suspect, that even if you were to lose the use of your hands you would not, for all that, let yourself die of hunger.
This is because you have not attended to another circumstance, which nevertheless demands your notice--namely, that from one end of the world to the other, quantities of hands are being employed in providing you with the wherewithal to eat.
To go on further: Have you any idea how many hands have been put in motion merely to enable you to have your coffee and roll in the morning? What a number, to be sure, over this cup of coffee (which is a trifle in comparison with the other food you will consume in the course of the day); from the hand of the negro who gathered the coffee crop to that of the cook who ground the berries, to say nothing of the hand of the sailor who guided the ship which bore them to our shores. Again, from the hand of the laborer who sowed the corn, and that of the miller who ground it into flour, to the hand of the baker who made it into a roll. Then the hand of the farmer's wife who milked the cow, and the hand of the refiner who made the sugar; to say nothing of the many others who prepared his work for him, and I know not how many more.
How would it be, then, if I were to amuse myself by counting up all the hands that are wanted to furnish--
The sugar-refiner's manufactory, The milkmaid's shed, The baker's oven, The miller's mill, The laborer's plough, The sailor's ship?
And even now is there nothing we have forgotten? Ah, yes! the most important of all the hands to you;--the hand which brings together for your benefit the fruits of the labor of all the others--the hand of your dear mother, always active, always ready, that hand which so often acts as yours when your own is awkward or idle.
Now, then, you see how you might really manage to do without those two comparatively helpless little paws of yours (although there is a thumb to each), without suffering too much for want of food. With such an army of hands at work, in every way, to furnish provision for that little mouth, there would not be much danger.
But cut off your cat's fore paws--oh dear! what am I saying? Suppose, rather, that she has not got any, and then count how many mice she will catch in a day. The milk you give her is another matter, remember. Like your cup of coffee, that is provided for her by others.
Believe me,