Their Greatest Delicacy

I pass over, too, that hard and lofty kind of self-control by which it is thought the greatest luxury if the plant called charlock, prepared with salt and soaked in water, is set on the table for the brothers’ meal. I pass over many other things like it, which in this country neither the climate nor the weakness of our constitution would allow. I will follow up only those matters that no weakness of the flesh and no local conditions can stand in the way of, so long as no weakness of mind or coldness of spirit does away with them. [a]