Deo Gratias = thanks be to god (any god).

Grace = a short prayer at a meal asking a blessing or giving thanks

From 129 years ago – here we have Henry S. Salt ‘spoofing’ a prayer – 6 verses attempting to make meat-munchers think / reflect.

Verse 1 – refers to ‘meat’.

Verse 2 – Oxen – over-driven, bruised, and sore – stumbling to the shambles’ door. (shambles = private slaughterhouse)

Verse 3 – Cod – plucked from the sea – gasping for air – killed with a knife.

Crimp = a method of preparing fish by slashing them while alive and leaving an hour or so in water before being plain boiled. This unusually English procedure was described in Francis Grose’s ‘Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue’ as “a cruel manner of cutting up fish alive, practised by the London fishmongers, in order to make it eat firm; cod, and other crimped fish, being a favourite dish among voluptuaries and epicures.”

Verse 4 – Veal calves – taken from their mothers – the blood drained from their bodies.

Verse 5 – Turkeys & pigs – slaughtered.

Verse 6 – refers to ‘corpses’.

The whole ‘Grace’ is reminding callous folk that they are eating a succession of corpses.

Henry S. Salt was ‘one sharp cookie’.

The Dietetic Reformer and Vegetarian Messenger

April 1st, 1885

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An image of our Ernest Bell Library copy of the 1885 magazine page

More of Henry S. Salt’s verses / poems – here.

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Deo Gratias

[A grace before meat, dedicated to our flesh-eating friends]

What fairer sight can earth afford
Than hungry friends round festive board,
With hearty grace before their meat,
“For what we are about to eat
God make us truly thankful!”

Photo Source

First  soup, concocted from the tails
of oxen brought from distant vales,
Till over-driven, bruised, and sore
They stumbled to the shambles’ door:
God make us truly thankful!

Photo Source

Crimped cod comes next, delightful dish;
Plucked from the sea, a lordly fish,
He gasped awhile, but soon, alack,
They cut the notches in his back:
God make us truly thankful!

Photo Source

Veal cutlets, delicately white,
A calf it was that frisked light,
Then, taken from its mother’s side,
Was slowly bled, and bleeding died:
God make us truly thankful!

Photo Source

A turkey next, from dunghill reft,
With sausages to right and left;
Sliced ham, the flesh of measly swine:
God spare the health of those who dine,
And make them truly thankful!

Photo Source

But here we pause; ‘twere long to tell
What corpses still the banquet swell;
How many a beast and bird has bled,
For which that hearty grace is said:
“God make us truly thankful!”

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Henry S. Salt – in – The Dietetic Reformer and Vegetarian Messenger, April 1, 1885

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Henry Shakespear Stephens Salt was born on 20 September 1851 in Nynee Tal, India, the son of Colonel Thomas Henry Salt of the Royal Bengal Artillery. He was christened Henry Shakespear Stephens Salt and shortly after his birth Salt’s mother, Ellen Matilda Salt, return to England with Henry. Much of his childhood was spent in the Shrewsbury home of his maternal grandparents, the Allnatts.

He was educated at Eton and Cambridge, before returning to Eton as a master. However, from about 1880 largely through his brother-in-law and fellow Eton master J.L. Joynes, he was introduced to the leading social reformers of the day including Henry George, William Morris and Edward Carpenter; and the then unknown George Bernard Shaw. Also, by gradual degrees he was beginning to question his diet and developing an interest in vegetarianism. By 1884 the conviction grew on him that Eton masters “were but cannibals in cap and gown – almost literally cannibals, as devouring the flesh and blood of animals … and indirectly cannibals, as living by the sweat and toil of the classes that do the hard work of the world”. – more.

Henry S. Salt & a cat friend

Photo Source

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Henry S. Salt’s ‘religious faith’

I have made two sections bold – the original piece was hand-written
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Henry Salt died in Brighton, Sussex, on 19 April 1939. At his cremation service his friend Bertram Lloyd read out the testament that Salt had written for his friends / for the occasion.

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It included these words: –
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“I wholly disbelieve in the present established religion; but I have a very firm religious faith of my own, a Creed of Kinship, I call it, a belief that in years to come there will be a recognition of the brotherhood between man and man, nation with nation, human and sub-human, which will transform a state of semi-savagery as we have it, into one of civilization, when there will be no barbarity as warfare, or the robbery of the poor by the rich, or the ill-usage of the lower animals by mankind. Such is my faith; and it is because I hold all supernatural doctrines taught under the name of religion to be actually harmful in diverting attention from the real truths, that I believe them to have a tendency, as Ingersoll expressed it, to petrify the heart.” – from another of our websites – http://www.henrysalt.co.uk/studies/essays/humane-influences-of-henry-salt
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Who was Ingersoll? What does “…petrify the heart.” mean? – see FAR below this – down, down, down.
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Our Projects

The Henry Salt Archive is one of our, almost completed, projects.

The Humanitarian League is our Hong Kong registered charity.

The Ernest Bell Library’s primary objectives are to: –

• Collect all of Ernest Bell’s book & non-book works and make them easily accessible to everyone.

• Collect the literature of vegetarianism and all the other humanitarian movements in which Ernest Bell was so deeply involved.

• Assist students and scholars in their research.

• Introduce all aspects of Ernest Bell’s life, including his writings, campaign work, influences and his circle of friends.

• Undertake our own research into missing aspects of Ernest Bell’s life and work.

We already have more than 300 pieces of Ernest Bell’s own writings.

We are also actively building a collection of examples of promotional material, campaign material, fundraising & marketing activities etc. – related to: –

1. veg(etari)an products.

2. veg(etari)an books & other publications.

3. veg(etari)an organisations.

4. veg(etari)an businesses.

5. animal rights organisations.

6. animal rights publications.

7. humanitarian organisations.

8. humanitarian publications.

9. rambling clubs run by members of the above groups & related publications.

10. the work of Richard St. Barbe Baker & the ‘Men of the Trees’ organization & its many sub-branches.

There are currently more than 2,000 items in the Ernest Bell Library.

We will complete the cataloging of the collection as & when adequate funds are available.

It is long past time for the library to go online!

 “I have little doubt that the proposal for the establishment of an Ernest Bell Library, which would specialize in humanitarian and progressive literature, and so form a sort of centre for students, will meet with a wide response.” 

Henry S. Salt – writing in September 1934

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If anyone would like more information, please send an email to: – 

humanitarianleague (at) outlook (dot) com 

– or message me  through HappyCow – 

https://www.happycow.net/blog/author/JohnnySensible/

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If you are a Tweeter, please consider sending this post out to your friends.

Thank you! 

Me – @JohnnySensible

HappyCow – @HappyCow 

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Who was Ingersoll? What does “…petrify the heart.” mean?

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G._Ingersoll
Robert Green “Bob” Ingersoll (August 11, 1833 – July 21, 1899) was a Civil War veteran, American political leader, and orator during the Golden Age of Freethought, noted for his broad range of culture and his defense of agnosticism. He was nicknamed “The Great Agnostic.”

http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Mistakes.html
Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll

Lecture on the Mistakes of Moses

Excerpt –

For instance: here is a man seventy years of age, who has been a splendid fellow and lived according to the laws of nature. He has got about him splendid children whom he has loved and cared for with all his heart. But he did not happen to believe in this Bible; he did not believe in the Pentateuch. He did not believe that because some children made fun of a gentleman who was short of hair, God sent two bears and tore the little darlings to pieces. He had a tender heart, and he thought about the mothers who would take the pieces, the bloody fragments of the children, and press them to their bosom in a frenzy of grief; he thought about their wails and lamentations, and could not believe that God was such an infinite monster. That was all he thought, but he went to Hell. Then, there is another man who made a hell on earth for his wife, who had to be taken to the insane asylum, and his children were driven from home and were wanderers and vagrants in the world. But just between the last sin and the last breath, this fellow got religion, and he never did another thing except to take his medicine. He never did a solitary human being a favor, and he died and went to heaven. Don’t you think he would be astonished to see that other man in hell, and say to himself, “Is it possible that such a splendid character should bear such fruit, and that all my rascality at last has brought me next to God?”

Or, let us put another case. You were once alone in the desert—no provisions, no water, no hope, just when your life was at its lowest ebb a man appeared, gave you water and food and brought you safely out. How you would bless that man. Time rolls on. You die and go to heaven; and one day you see through the black night of hell, the friend who saved your life, begging for a drop of water to cool his parched lips. He cries to you, “Remember what I did in the desert—give me to drink.” How mean, how contemptible you would feel to see his suffering and be unable to relieve him. But this is the Christian heaven. We sit by the fireside and see the flames and the sparks fly up the chimney—everybody happy, and the cold wind and sleet are beating on the window, and out on the doorstep is a mother with a child on her breast freezing. How happy it makes a fireside, that beautiful contrast. And we say, “God is good,” and there we sit, and she sits and moans, not one night but forever. Or we are sitting at the table with our wives and children, everybody eating, happy and delighted; and Famine comes and pushes out its shriveled palms, and, with hungry eyes, implores us for a crust. How that would increase the appetite! And yet that is the Christian heaven. Don’t you see that these infamous doctrines petrify the human heart? And I would have everyone who hears me, swear that he will never contribute another dollar to build another church in which is taught such infamous lies. I want everyone of you to say, that you never will, directly or indirectly, give a dollar to any man to preach that falsehood. It has done harm enough. It has covered the world with blood. It has filled the asylums for the insane. It has cast a shadow in the heart, in the sunlight of every good and tender man and woman. I say let us rid the heavens of this monster, and write upon the dome “Liberty, love and law.”

Walt Whitman on Bob Ingersoll: –

“It should not be surprising that I am drawn to Ingersoll, for he is Leaves of Grass… He lives, embodies, the individuality, I preach. I see in Bob [Ingersoll] the noblest specimen—American-flavored—pure out of the soil, spreading, giving, demanding light.” – Walt Whitman

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