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A modern Peter Magnus, always on the alert for coincidences, once called my attention to the singular fitness of the height of the fish season and the coming of Lent.

“It happens uncommonly convenient, at any rate. How very, very awkward it would be if there were no fish in the market just when the Church forbids meat!” prosed my interlocutor, whose nationality I need not specify.

I might have replied, had there been any hope of his seeing the point of the story, with the anecdote of one of his countrymen who invited me to view the total eclipse of the moon through his telescope, and, while I gazed, remarked upon the happy accident that this particular eclipse “had taken place at the full of the moon.”

Dame Nature adjusts kindly and cleverly all seasons and happenings to the need of her children. Fish, easily digested and rich in phosphates, are in their delicious prime as winter suddenly relaxes her hold upon our world and our systems. We needed fats to keep up animal fats in cold weather. The first warmer days ease the taut running-gear of muscles, nerves and digestive apparatus. She cries, “’Ware meat!” peremptorily. However deaf we may be to the Church’s behest, we can not afford to disregard the Great Mother’s.

The breaking up of winter, the general letting down of physical energies and the abundant supply of food precisely adapted to the season’s needs, form a “coincidence” that the most stupid must perceive. The like principle of demand and supply might, one might imagine, be recognized in the matter of breakfast foods. Fish, rightly cooked, tempts the appetite and does not overload the stomach. Another recommendation which should have weight with commuters and “hustlers,” is that the yielding fibers require less strenuous mastication than those of steaks, chops and rashers.

The truism that as a nation we are inordinate flesh-consumers is tattered by much wear. Since vegetarianism comes as a hard lesson to the mass of our race, and the exacting palate demands more definite flavors than those of eggs in any form, resort to crustacean and finny delicacies should follow as a matter of course and of common sense.