Chapter V: Part 5

"I think my experience will be especially comforting to you because of my repeated trials and lapses. I can see now how important it is for one to practise careful mouth-treatment until the habit is acquired and the performance becomes automatic. There is no doubt in my mind but what there is a natural protection given us by nature which has been lost by perversion. I feel confident that you will get ultimate credit for the re-establishment of a rational habit of eating which, under normal conditions of food supply, is a protector against premature swallowing of food.

"G---- has seen the result in me and he is dropping meat to a great extent and his breakfasts have dwindled to a mere fraction of what they formerly were. The same is true of M----."

A FIVE YEARS' LAY EXPERIENCE

The good fortune of yesterday, July 29, 1903, brought a telephone message from an old and very dear friend who has been impressed with the virtues of buccal digestion for the past five years. Five years ago my friend was a sick man, past fifty years of age. During his youth and early manhood he had been an optimist among optimists, leading a congenial life among agreeable friends, with the best the world had to offer in the way of recreation and fare. His great misfortune at the time was indigestion and the troubles that accompany indigestion. If he drank a small cup of coffee at night he could not sleep, and he was subject to the constant uncertainty of health and frequent recurrence of acute diseases that are common to the victims of luxury.

The very ill-health emergency and dilemma of my friend led him to catch at any stray straw of hope or comfort. When we met, some months after the beginning of my experiments, he was compelled to note a great difference in my appearance; the portly and robust but heavy, short-winded and unwieldy friend of bygone years in sumptuous New Orleans had become "spare" and active, and told of improvement in health-conditions that seemed almost miraculous. The still-suffering friend was interested to the point of listening and trying the remedy. Half as a joke and half in earnest the regimen recommended by me was adopted and carried forward far enough to secure some noticeable good results. Following up these favourable results with continuance of the regimen brought progressive improvement of health and increasing conviction of the merits of thorough buccal digestion.

The evidence of physical improvement resulting from five years' attention to buccal thoroughness in the ordinary course of an adventurous life is here given briefly from memory fresh from the telling:

"You remember the state of health I was in when we met here in the Waldorf five years ago. The benefit of the recovery that I had secured at Sierra Blanca had been gradually lost, and I was pretty well down to my last legs again. If I hadn't been struck by the marvellous alteration in your appearance from what it was when I had seen you last, I should have been terribly bored by your relation of your experience, for I was sick to death of mention of cures and diet-regimens of all sorts. But you astonished me so by your changed appearance, and I was in such a hopeless condition, that I thought I would give your scheme a trial. Next day, my breakfast, which was also my lunch, for I was feeling too badly to get up earlier, brought me some sweet corn as one of the several items I habitually ordered. In giving this corn thorough chewing before swallowing I noticed that, while the inside of the corn liquefied readily and was quickly swallowed, there remained in my mouth a collection of the hulls, and these invited the bad table-manners of 'spitting out.' I removed this collection of refuse as delicately as possible, and, on examination, found that it consisted of hard substance that I had never noticed before in connection with cooked sweet corn. This set me to thinking. What had I not been putting into my stomach all these years in my ignorance of the constituents of this one kind of common food, and what not in other foods that I had not yet observed?

"In continuing the observation further, I discovered that many of the foods that I was accustomed to take contained hard, insoluble ingredients or cottony fibre that got more and more cottony and refractory with mastication. In trying coffee, my favourite beverage, as you told me I might do if I handled it rightly in the mouth, I tasted it until it was absorbed or swallowed involuntarily just as you told me the expert wine-tasters and tea-tasters do. I sipped and enjoyed my small cup of coffee as I had never done before in my life, and knew afterwards that it had not hurt me as usual, as no immediate protest came from the stomach, which formerly had been the case. I slept the 'sleep of the just' that night, and awoke in fine form next morning. From that day to this I have not been troubled with indigestion, and during these five years I have not been sick a day or an hour or a moment, and have slept like a babe. I haven't kept my weight quite down where it ought to be for best comfort, but I have supported the burden with my general good health and digestion. My temptations to lapse have been enormous, for I have had the good fare of two continents thrown at me by most enticing invitation, and I have run the gantlet of extraordinary _menus_ without phasing, with the results I have recounted.

"Do you remember the day of the public funeral of General Grant, when his tomb on the Riverside Drive--Morningside Heights--was dedicated? You remember that we had been invited to Mr. H----'s to witness the parade and take lunch? How we were caught on the wrong side of the procession on Fifth Avenue and were hurrying to get ahead of the column and across to the other side of the Avenue? Well! do you remember how we puffed and blowed when we had run a couple of blocks and how we were red in the face and nearly knocked up? We were both fat then and short-winded, and we never would have been able to get to our destination if I had not hypnotised a policeman and persuaded him to lead us across the Avenue like a pair of emergency hospital cases or disorderly arrests.

"Since then you have had your experience of recovery as the result of your deliberate experiment made for a purpose, and I have had mine as the result of noting the improvement in you, and for all of which I owe you my life, whatever that may be worth.

"At the time of the great Naval Review, or something of the sort--I have forgotten what--a party of us went to the pier of the Southern Pacific Company to see the show. There were Ned H----, and Captain H----, and two other men, and myself, with four ladies. On coming up town we were booked for another engagement, the time for which had not yet arrived. We were in the vicinity of the Hoffman House and drifted in there and into the ball-room. The floor was most tempting and the orchestrion willing. It was too suggestive a combination for the ladies, who were young and fine dancers, and they exclaimed with one voice, 'Oh, how lovely! I wish we might dance.' It proved that I was the only dancing-man among the men. I had been a dancer in my younger days, but I had let up on it since I had become stout. However, by way of a joke and to please the young ladies, I offered to be a partner. My offer was accepted, also as a joke, but the sequel was a surprise. We set the orchestrion going on a Waldteufel waltz, and I grabbed one of the young ladies for a round. Really, I was amazed. I danced as easily as I did when a youngster, and round and round we went. Finally, my partner begged for a rest, so I waltzed her to a seat, and, excited with the revelation of an endurance I did not know I possessed, I grabbed the next lady from her seat and repeated the tiring-out process as easily as in the first attempt. There were yet two ladies fresh and eager to assist in 'doing Uncle Nat up,' and I repeated the performance with them, also, dancing the last to a dead standstill on account of her determined obstinacy. _She_ had to complete the 'doing up' of the old man, or Age would win a battle from Youth, which would never do. Well, to make a long story short, and to get to the illustration. I was warm and ruddy, but I was less fatigued than I remember to have been as a youngster when I had danced for a long time.

"Since then I have not balked at any feat of physical endurance, and I feel as young to-day as my white hair will let me. I have tried to get my friends to chewing their food persistently, and have gained many adherents to your cause, but I have had to stand an immense amount of chaffing meanwhile. I tried to get Mr. H---- to chew his bread and milk, but he always laughed at me, and chaffed me constantly when I was with him about my chewing fad. One man, whom I saw much of, and who needed your advice more than anybody else, got so sick of the subject that when I received a letter from you, telling of some new discovery and some new triumph of the cause of chewing, I would attempt to read it to him; but he would not listen, and persisted in calling it rot, although he knew that I had become a remarkably well man, whereas I was formerly a very sick man. Both of these scoffers have gone and I am left, as chipper and as fit as a fiddle new-strung for the music of a happy life. If we don't catch up with Luigi Cornaro on our record it will not be for want of good digestion."

This is a little bit of intimacy that the good Baron Randolph Natili will not object to offer in evidence in our cause; for no one living has a heart and a will to do a favour or spread a benefit more than he. Only yesterday he said, in a burst of enthusiasm, "How is it possible for me to dislike any one, feeling the way I do? I have likes immensely stronger than other likes on account of similar or closer sympathies, but it seems to me now that to really dislike any one that the Creator has made, or anything that he has created, would do violence to the Memory of My Mother."

DR. HIGGINS' CASE AND COMMENT

"DEAR MR. FLETCHER:

"You ask me to write you a short account of my experiences with economical nutrition with comments, and a few words about my physical and mental history.

"_Previous History_:--The best period of health that I can remember in my life was that between seventeen and twenty-one, during the time I was preparing for the medical profession. I had a small breakfast at about 7.30 A.M. and then went up to London to St. George's Hospital, which was about fourteen miles from my home. My parents gave me 2/6 for my midday meal but I fortunately economised and only spent 6_d_-10_d_ of it on food. After finishing my work I usually arrived home at 5.30 and had a 'meat tea'; this allowed me to devote six hours to reading. During the whole of this period I was in excellent mental and physical condition. I was made house surgeon at twenty-one, obtained my degree in under four years besides obtaining several valuable prizes.

"After this I lived in the Hospital where three meat meals were provided. These I conscientiously ate 'to keep up my strength' during the performance of my exhausting duties. I consider that this period was the commencement of my degeneration. I put on twenty-four pounds in weight and lost much of my mental energy.

"To condense, as much as possible: my strong hereditary tendency to gout with the excessive meat eating, the hurried eating during some three and one-half years at St. George's Hospital, London, and at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, resulted in constant suffering from headache, lumbago, rheumatic pains, and all those distressing symptoms known under the generic name of 'goutiness.' After seven or eight years I weighed two hundred and twenty-four pounds and complained of increasing symptoms of gout. I then became a patient of Dr. H----, of London, whose system requires one to abstain from meat, fish, poultry, beans, tea, coffee, in other words, from foods containing uric acid or its equivalent. For about five years, till the end of 1901, when I first met you, I fluctuated considerably in health, on the whole I am bound to say, in a steadily downward direction, till I was overloaded with the excessive weight of two hundred and eighty-two pounds.

"_History of Period of Regeneration_:--I commenced under your advice, masticating my food thoroughly at the end of December, 1901. After practising this method till the present date September, 1903, I have lost one hundred and four pounds in weight and consider that I have gained very considerably in mental and physical fitness. I prefer to divide this period into two parts: (_a_) _The first eight months._ During this time I followed my appetite, but with a strong mental bias in favour of keeping up as nearly as possible to the daily 'physiological ration' of nitrogenous food. I lost notwithstanding some sixty-four pounds in weight in spite of having an inordinate appetite for butter, and generally taking two pints of milk daily. During this period I undertook some very severe work in the Laboratory of Physiological Chemistry, with the object of trying to devise some method of measuring the extent of a person's departure from their optimum health. This led almost unconsciously to a stronger mental bias in favour of prescribing the amount of food one should eat, and to a certain number of experiments in feeding. Towards the end of this period I got rather exhausted in consequence of my severe work and complained of occasional headaches. Following the suggestions of some friends I added fifty grams of casein to my daily diet for two or three weeks. This was followed by a return of rheumatism and considerable sickness and inability to work. (_b_) _The subsequent six months._ I resolved to devote this period to a careful study of my desires for food--to take no notes--to make no experiments--in short, to allow my body to run itself, and to try to make my brain interpret the wants of the body. I had moved for the purpose of this experiment into a small house, with a boy and a woman who came daily to clean the house--(I mention these details because practically one finds that a woman has usually such quick sympathy about matters concerning food, that their agitation and fears are enough in themselves to cause you to modify your diet). I only kept bread, butter, and milk in the house, all other foods I was obliged to send for, and if I required a dish to be cooked, I first learned how to do it myself and then taught the boy. I had no fixed times for meals, and did not have a table laid, my food always being brought up on a tray; usually I did not interrupt the work I was doing. I deliberately adopted all these precautions because I had become aware by experience of the extraordinary influence suggestion, and other mind influences, such as habit, had in one's selection of food and the amount one ate. During the first two months in conscientiously eating what I wished, as much of it as I wanted and when my appetite demanded food, my desires were very irregular, ranging over meats and fish, (occasionally) chocolate, sweets, cream, cheese, butter, milk, bread, potatoes, oranges, bananas, sugar, etc., but during the final period my desires were much more simple and regular, confining themselves to bread, Gruyère cheese, butter, cream, bananas, potatoes, occasionally milk. During and subsequent to this period I have become convinced that provided you eat your food slowly and follow your appetite, without guidance from any other knowledge whatever, one gets marked preferences for simple foods with increasing health and happiness, the contentment that comes from the inestimably valuable possession of simple desires.

"_Comments on the System_:--The great attraction the system has for me is its frank admission that: (1) One knows practically nothing of those chemical processes that occur during digestion. (2) The guidance for the conduct of life afforded by such vague phrases as 'the collective wisdom of mankind' leave one on the most superficial examination in a state of great doubt, to say the least of it. (3) The guidance afforded by the dogmas of science are open to the most disquieting criticism. (_a_) In the prescription of method without a knowledge of the mysteries of digestion. (_b_) In those observations on insufficient standards of mental and physical optimum efficiency, and of short periods of observation based solely on nitrogenous equilibrium and output of work that you have already shown to be fallacious and variable. (_c_) In short, that one can say that none of the physiological dogmas based on chemistry are not open to criticism.

"If this is admitted, and the choice of the quantity and quality of food thrown on taste and appetite, we are at once provided with a natural means of ascertaining the body's actual wants from day to day. The phenomena that have resulted from the more thorough insalivation and mastication of food can only be described as remarkable and of the highest importance for the progress of that most important of all sciences, the right conduct of life. The great advantage of finely dividing the food in the mouth so as to present as large a surface as possible for the action of the intestinal juices, is obvious when one reflects on the rapidity with which bacteria can and do act on pieces having a smaller area in consequence of their larger bulk. When one reflects that Dr. Mott attributes the main cause of insanity to the absorption by the body of the cleavage products produced by microbes in the intestines, and the increasing recognition of such poisons in the causation of chronic disease and disturbances of health, this factor alone would afford an explanation of some of the phenomena induced by the practice of economical nutrition.

"A method having the results that this has it need scarcely be said is revolutionary; all one's preconceived notions of the conduct of life are found to be based on grounds open to grave criticism and it throws a great responsibility on all those concerned in its study to endeavour by all the means in their power to present a more completely demonstrated and unanswerable case to those who are responsible for the world's guidance in these matters, with as little delay as possible,

"Yours faithfully,
"HUBERT HIGGINS, M. A. CANTAB.
M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.

"Late House Surgeon to St. George's Hospital, London, and the Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. Demonstrator of Anatomy to the University of Cambridge and Assistant Surgeon to Addenbrooke's Hospital."

QUARANTINE

THE NECESSITY OF PROTECTION

NOTE: A paper, read before members of the Unity League and other guests of Mr. and Mrs. William S. Harbert, at Tre-Brah, Williams Bay, Geneva Lake, Wisconsin, in August, 1898.

It is pertinent to the subject of this book, but was written when the investigations described herein were just beginning.

Progress of Civilisation is accelerated by constantly extending systems of individual, moral, social and sanitary quarantine.

It is not what man adds, for he can _add_ nothing, but what he prevents, that aids growth.

Man creates nothing, but he assists Creation by removing deterrents to growth. Growth is spontaneous, constant and ever stronger if obstructions are removed. Creation does _all the growing_, but _cultivates_ nothing; the seed falling upon good soil or upon stony waste without other direction than that given by the caprice of the winds.

On the other hand, Man is the _only cultivator_ in Nature, and at the same time he can add nothing to growth--to Creation.

Visible, or conscious, growth consists of cell building or thought producing. Man never has created a cell, neither has he been able to determine the origin of a thought; yet, he is a necessary factor in evolution and a prime factor in cultivation, which is civilisation.

Man removes deterrents to growth. Nature "does the rest."

Thought and cell creation are spontaneous and are never-ceasing if all obstructions are removed from about them. Civilised man places a quarantine against the enemies of growth, of progress, and of harmony, and thereby promotes civilisation.

Man is, therefore, the Chief Assistant to Creation, the Architect of Civilisation and a _Full Partner_ with Nature in Evolution.

This distinction, adequately appreciated, lifts Man above the animal plane and gives him a place among the gods; his material form, composed of muscle, hands, powers of locomotion and speech, being but tools with which to harness and coöperate with the other forces in Nature, under the direction of the godlike attribute of the Mind, in the removal of deterrents to free growth, and the cultivation of that Harmony which is the symbol of God.

* * * * *

Having assumed as an hypothesis that Man is Full Partner with Nature in Evolution; and having discovered his proper function in the "Division of Labour" in Nature, it is time for each of us to analyse the conditions which environ us as Man units, select those which seem to be useful to our scheme of construction and harmony, declare all deterrents to the growth of our selection to be weeds, and then proceed to remove them without delay, first, by pulling those which now exist, and following that by establishing strict quarantine against them.

* * * * *

I can teach only that which I have learned, and pronounce good only that which has led to happiness. I will therefore note the progress of my own discoveries and describe those which have brought increasing happiness, in order that they may serve as beacons and monuments to such as may seek the same goal along the same lines of inquiry.

The first forty-five years of my present life were spent in seeking happiness by means of personal accumulation. Money, friends, distinction, acquaintance with art in all its various expressions, lands, luxurious homes in favoured localities, pictures, rare porcelains, lacquers and other possessions, isolated for my own use, and for the enjoyment of chosen friends, seemed to be the necessary desiderata of happiness.

In turn, all of these came to me in sufficient abundance to give, at least, a taste of their quality and their efficacy in promoting happiness; but, in the midst of them were always obstructions to unhampered enjoyment, increasing with possession and accumulation of the coveted means, and constantly mocking, as with a mirage, the ultimate ideal desired.

During these forty-five years of quest of happiness there were constantly appearing above the horizon of my search flashes of hope, leading in new directions, which proved in turn to be but will o' the wisps, until the night--the morning--of my awakening, as related in my book "Menticulture."

It was then, for the first time, I heard that it was possible to _get rid_ of anger and worry, the _bêtes noires_ of my existence, which were, as I then believed and as I now know, the dreaded barriers between me and perfect happiness; not because the mere removal of these particular deterrents to happiness will accomplish happiness, but because the certain result of the removal of any principal mental obstructions leads to the disappearance of contingent errors, and permits freedom of growth of the elements of true happiness.

* * * * *

It is proper to state here the definition of happiness which is the result of my progressive quest. There is only one quality of true happiness, as there can only be one kind of quarantine, and the former is dependent on the latter. If both are not _perfect_, both fail. True happiness is _the evidence and fruit of conscious usefulness, and quarantine against obstructions to normal altruistic energy is the best means of attaining happiness_.

In view of the establishment of the status of the Man unit in the Nature-Man partnership, the above definition and assertion may be extended to declare that there can be no genuine happiness short of _usefulness in assisting other units to be strong and useful in the partnership of which each is a member_.

True happiness cannot exist if there is present an element of indifference.

Next to destructive aggression, indifference, which leads to neglect and waste, is the worst fault that a member of the Nature-Man partnership can be guilty of. Neglect _nothing_ that will aid growth in any useful form, and happiness will surely follow, for Nature and the God of Nature will "do the rest."

* * * * *

In qualifying for the Nature-Man partnership, it is of first importance that our personal equipment should be understood and cared for so as to give us the greatest strength. The body may appropriately be likened to an electric power plant--a Mind-Power Plant; the body being the engine, the stomach the furnace, the arteries and veins the boiler tubes, the blood in circulation the steam, the brain the dynamo, and the mind electricity.

Mind is the all-important factor of our equipment, for it is the commander that will lead and direct better and wiser than we can now imagine if we allow it a chance to act with freedom.

To secure this freedom we must know its habitat, its requirements, its nourishment, and learn to allow it to recharge itself sufficiently and to concentrate itself on its chosen usefulness without imposing upon it also the drudgery of useless work. This must be done with the same idea of economy that a _chef_ is relieved of the drudgery of washing dishes and emptying slops.

According to Dr. Edward Hooker Dewey, a pharmacist, army surgeon and tireless investigator of forty-five years' experience, whose revelations have been before the medical profession of the world for many years without a single challenge, the brain is a dynamo which accumulates energy during sleep, and uses it during the waking hours of its possessor.

The brain manages everything for man that he accomplishes. It brings messages from the Creator, which are sometimes called intuition, sometimes inspiration, and by various other names. Emerson calls these messages the "Over-Soul." My own appreciation of the attribute that distinguishes the Spiritual Man from the animal man is better satisfied by the name "Spiritual Cerebration," which I have defined in my book "Happiness" as: "Intelligence not derived from experience, principally obtained during sleep, and, seemingly supernaturally clear to consciousness on awaking in the natural manner."

The brain also directs all action, and, with encouragement, will take up the messages from the Creator and analyse, arrange, and develop them into useful accomplishments, and then file them away in the archives of the memory as additions to the equipment which is necessary to greatness in the pursuit of usefulness.

Dr. Dewey gives the bill of fare of the brain in seeking its own nourishment, and also describes the work it performs in transforming the fuel we supply it with into the tissues on which it feeds.

This is undoubtedly a very important discovery and locates the source of strength and teaches how to conserve it.

I will not give the technical bill of fare of the brain, for you would not remember it better than I do, but it is all composed of tissues of the body, fat predominating to the quantity of ninety-seven per cent, but the important announcement is that neither the brain itself nor any of the nervous centres diminish during consumption of tissue, neither do they lose any of their power, even in cases of what is called starvation, up to the point of death, when all of the fatty and muscular tissues of the body are wasted away, leaving the brain and nerve centres to flicker and go out, as a candle does, brighter than usual with the parting flash of their brilliancy.

Dr. Dewey gives President Garfield as an illustrious example of proof of the accuracy of his deduction. The martyr President lived eighty days without the addition of an ounce of nutriment to his life, carried the usual clearness of mind to the last moment, and passed on only when the last muscular tissue had been consumed by the brain.

Dr. Dewey's assertion that starvation, so-called, is never a cause of disease, and never dangerous to life and health until there is no more tissue left on which to feed the brain and other nerve centres, was published some years ago and I have the authority of the Doctor himself that his contention has not been once disputed by the medical profession. Three eminent English physicians, Drs. A. M. Haig, George S. Keith and A. Rabigliati, and many American physicians, have experimented with what is called starvation for the cure of chronic diseases which have their origin in excess of inharmonious deposits caused by overeating or careless eating. The results in all instances recorded have been successful in modifying or curing the disease.

When patients have understood that they were suffering no injury from not taking food they have ceased to have hunger cravings. These hunger cravings usually come from fear or from disorder caused by fermenting food in an overloaded stomach.

We can, then, on undisputed and practical authority, treat craving for food or drink as a disease and therefore not rational, and starvation as merely drawing upon the stored fuel--fatty tissue--by the dynamo of the brain, restorable at will at any time before complete exhaustion, without injury-- with benefit, in fact--to the machinery of the body.

The brain must first turn food into tissue, and then derive its own nourishment from the tissue. If the right quantity of nourishment can be introduced into the stomach, if the quality is of the right kind, and if it is fed into the furnace of the stomach with relatively the same wisdom that a competent fireman uses in feeding his furnace, the brain is required to use the least possible effort in this direction, and has its stored energy available for directing other useful action and serving the partnership which employs it with an efficiency, the possibility of which may be well illustrated by the herculean accomplishments of the battleship "Oregon" in the late war in steaming thirteen thousand miles and engaging in a great battle without a stop or an accident, and without "starting" a rivet.

I will not tell you much of what Dr. Dewey has revealed, because I want you to read all he has written,[18] as well as the books of the English physicians mentioned, but I must say this much: Very little digestion goes on during sleep, and, whether it does or not the brain has from sixty to one hundred days' nourishment stored up within each of us, and can feed on that without inconvenience to us, except in the form of what is called habit craving or imaginary hunger, for the whole of that time. A person who has been without food for an unusual time, if he does not gorge his stomach when the first opportunity of breaking the fast arrives, is not only better for the rest the brain has had, but the health does not suffer in any way.

[Footnote 18: Dr. Dewey is the author of numerous books: notably, the "No-Breakfast Plan" which he supplies to inquirers direct from his home address, Meadville, Pa.]

It is, then, no serious deprivation to ask a person to go without what we call breakfast--the getting-up or habit-craving--and give the brain a chance to clean up the remnants of the last day's supply of food fuel, and express new desires in an _earned_ appetite. There is available, on waking from sleep, a fresh charged brain ready to serve its proprietor with great efficiency. Incidentally it has to do some "chores," rake out the clinkers, dispose of the ashes, relieve the grate bars, attend to any little repairs, brush out the chimney and generally get ready for the work of another day.

The hunger of the morning is necessarily but a _habit-hunger_. The best evidence of this is that, when busily employed, we forget it without trouble; and also is that European peoples, where the disease dyspepsia is not known in the list of physical derangements, perform the chief physical or mental effort of the day before their breakfast, the morning coffee scarcely meaning anything in the way of what we call a meal.

Dr. Dewey's firm assertion is that when the stomach has had a chance to "clean up" and is ready for more fuel, it will make it known in healthy manner by a healthy appetite, and that it is rarely normal before noon; and not really before one has done what might be called a "day's work."

I can assert boldly, as the result of experience, that the time to get work out of the brain is between the morning awakening and the first meal, and it is the same relative to endurance draughts on the physical strength.

Then, in the heat or the glare of the day, having accomplished something useful and disposed of pressing duties, so as not to feel the irritation of hurry, the first meal of the day can be taken with restful ease and it will be found that the supply demanded by the appetite will not be so great as that demanded by the unhealthful, habit-inflamed early morning call.

It may not seem so, but this digression from psychics to physics is very germane to my subject and to my own experience.

Without knowing that Dr. Dewey and the other eminent physicians who endorse his theories were living in the world, I, in the summer of 1894, blundered into a personal experience of diet that produced wonderful results which I now recall with all the vividness of the high lights of extreme pleasure met in foreign travel.

I was in a Southern city for two months during an unusually hot summer, watching some developments that could not be hurried, and the fruition of which was important to my interests. I had nothing to do in connection with this business but to "watch and wait."

I had some writing to do, however, in the mean time, which could not be well or comfortably done in the heat of the day, hence I arose at daylight and began to write. At that time of the morning nothing to eat was to be had, which compelled me to start work without it. My subject was an absorbing one, so that, once under way, I would not be diverted until I had "written myself out;" or in other words, had exhausted the consideration of the morning messages which I now designate "Spiritual Cerebration."

It happened, under these circumstances, that my habit-hunger was not given a hearing and it was nearly noon before I felt the fatigue or even the heat of the burning day, for I worked in my pajamas, and had no time to look at the thermometer, to get an exaggerated suggestion of heat by which to start my blood chasing itself through my veins.

I not only noticed that my midday breakfast was a deliciously grateful meal, but that appetite became satisfied far short of the formally customary abnormal early morning gorge, and, what was more remarkable yet, I wanted nothing during the rest of the day, and not even until midnight, except, after vigorous exercise of some sort, I might desire a little fruit or a bit of bread or cracker; but never a full course dinner.

I wore a belt at my trousers, as was the custom of the place, and in a few days decreased the girth of my corpulency one hole in the belt; and before the summer was over, four holes, with only the most comfortable feeling accompanying the loss of weight.

When my family returned from Europe, I settled back into the American and English habit of a meat breakfast, because I did not want to be "different," and at the same time I half doubted but that my experience was nothing more than an abnormal one, attributable to the inertia of summer heat, literary absorption and lack of physical exercise.

Twice, when I have been left alone since then, away from the restraint of custom, and also in the midst of abundant athletic exercise, I have again cultivated the same habit of missing breakfast through desire to do early morning work, with the same splendid results.

The last time referred to is the present. My search for a lost waif through the framing of an appeal for him, has given me such absorbing thought that meals have been of no consideration beside it, and in the midst of it I find Dr. Dewey's book, the books of the English physicians indorsing him; and have secured results of health, comfort and strength to myself which I did not know I possessed; to corroborate my accidental experience. As I said before, this seems a very wide digression from the psychical to the physical, but it is really no digression at all, for it is in the service of the brain, and the brain is the direct agent of communication between the Creator and our consciousness, assisting us to work together in the Nature-Man partnership with useful efficiency.

* * * * *

Now, let me return to the aim of my address, and pursue the thread of my personal experience in search of the fundamental principles of True Living, which, to be proven, must be vouched for and tested by resultant happiness.

When I attacked the tap-roots of trouble and shut the door in the face of anger and worry for ever, I saw among the bones of their decomposition the skeleton of fear. It proved to be their backbone. Fear, then, was the support of all the deterrent passions that beset brightest manhood and womanhood and pursue it to an untimely death.

My book "Happiness" deals with the separation of fearthought from forethought in order to show that it is possible to smother a vital stimulant of energy with a resemblance of it which is as deadly a poison as carbonic acid gas.

While I have been engaged in pursuing germs of disorder to their beginnings, during the past three or four years, I have uncovered many a beautiful possession that formerly I did not appreciate. _Appreciation of the full value of Appreciation_ is one of these discoveries of priceless value and usefulness. I have spoken of this in "Happiness," but not as much as it deserves, for it truly is "The Appreciation of God and of Good that gives birth to Love, and which is the only true and adequate measure of wealth."

Nothing else, however, in the whole quest, has approached the beauty of the love for children that has come to me; the appreciation of them as Messages from the Creator, consigned to the cultivation of the environment society provides for them; as likely as not, any one of them bringing into the world a great intelligence by means of the humblest of parents.

During observation of social questions in Europe, my interest has been drawn constantly to children, as by a powerful magnet, so that when I was called back to this country to attend to a detail of business and met the adventure which is the cause of my present focalised interest in neglected ones, as expressed in a book to be called, when published, "That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine,"[19] it was but natural that I should put all the force of my sympathy into the cause of rescue, and that I should find in that service more happiness than in any of the luxurious amusements which had claimed me as a devotee in times gone by.

[Footnote 19: Published, and proceeds dedicated to the cause of the waifs, October, 1898.]

True _happiness is the result of conscious usefulness_. This I can assert with the confidence of knowledge, not alone from my own experience, but from observation of the great army of kindergartners and child-savers whom I have met in my travels, and especially within the past year; and it is evident that the service attaching to protecting little neglected angels from the evil suggestions and the cruel conditions that may make of them, not men, but beasts, is one of the avenues of usefulness in which these "Angels of the State" meet with the smile of the Master, who was the first Great Kindergartner; whose teachings centred about and dwelt upon the care of children as of first consideration, and who said, "Suffer Little Children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."

Childhood has suffered, manhood has suffered, progress has suffered, for lo! these ages, the cruel assumption that mankind is naturally depraved. In recent years public conscience has been dulled by the anæsthetic that there must be a Have-To-Be-Bad Class in all communities. This has been formulated into the assumption that there is in every group of the Heaven-Sent Angels of Purity, a full ten per cent that must be depraved and unredeemable except by the interposition of special dispensation, which is a direct contradiction of all of the observed Laws of Creation to which intelligence now subscribes. The motto of this assumption is couched in this vicious legend: "The hopelessly submerged ten per cent stratum of society."

Half an hour's walk from this hospitable mansion, on the shore of the beautiful Geneva Lake, is a place called "Holiday Home." There are now housed and thoughtfully cared for at the "Home" about one hundred of the "Hopelessly Submerged Ten Per Cent Stratum of (Chicago's) Society." During the summer half a thousand of these unfortunates will come for two weeks each. When we touched at the wharf last evening after coming from the concert given in their interest at Mr. Chalner's lakeside home, the waifs met us with a merry class-yell, and greeted us with an intelligence, a buoyancy, and a freedom, born of their holiday, such as was not excelled at any of the other landings where only the children of rich summer residenters were met. We all saw these "waifs" and we marvelled at them, for, with the grime of the slum washed from their sweet faces, and with clean, though sometimes ragged clothing, they might have figured in the mix-up of "Pinafore," or have starred in a dramatic representation of the "Prince and the Pauper," with all the grace required of princelings.

They haven't been long from God, and they are god-like or not, as we have welcomed and protected them, or rebuffed or neglected them.

Let me assure you in the most practical way that there are two sides to this child question. There is a sentimental side, than which there is no other so worthy; and there is a practical side, than which there is none so profitable.

The best and most profitable service in the whole gamut of useful occupations that I know about is in learning to know children, and in connection with a Quarantine movement which is now started, and which aims to not let one of these wards of the Christ escape the best care known to Love and the Science of Child-Life.

The crèche and the kindergarten and the manual training schools, and domestic training classes, as well as institutions similar to the "Holiday Home" across the Bay, have demonstrated within the past thirty years that fully ninety-eight per cent of the "Hopelessly Submerged Ten Per Cent" can be rescued after they have been warped by evil surroundings. What will not the same effort effect if directed toward prevention and protection, instead of being squandered in careless and soulless correction?

Christ said: "And a little child shall lead them." Let us awake to the call. It is the way to Heaven; for, "_Of such_ is the Kingdom of Heaven."

FIVE YEARS' CONFIRMATORY EVIDENCE

The spirit of the preceding address to the good members of the Unity League organisation on the shores of beautiful Lake Geneva has been the inspiring motive of the quest for scientific endorsement of Economic Nutrition for the benefit of the present generation of children, and, incidentally, of their elders. In Economic Nutrition lies protection from sexual morbidity, alcoholic intemperance, bodily disease, savage passions and all the brood of evil contamination and temptation. In Economic Nutrition lie possibilities of physical and mental energy and optimistic happiness such as the world has not been accustomed to in the memory of history. Economic Nutrition is what children want to be taught with their first indelible impressions, and the present great movement of which this little book treats, for which it was first responsible, and for which it is republished in a new and extended edition, is expected to furnish authoritative knowledge relative to the most Economic Nutrition, so that mothers and kindergartners may meet the little waifs from the Creator on the threshold of this present life with words of wisdom and examples of sanitary perfection, instead of confronting them at once with the poison of ignorance relative to their most important concern,--their own Economic Nutrition.

That the contentions uttered in "That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine," referred to in the Lake Geneva Address, are reasonable is evidenced by the experience of Dr. and Mrs. Kellogg and their adopted family of twenty-four waifs, the acquaintance of which has since been made.

All of the altruists who have engaged in kindergardenry among the neglected, Dr. Barnardo, Dr. Kellogg and the rest, are full of confidence in the possibility and efficacy of a perfect quarantine as outlined in "That Last Waif." It is an _Epicurean_ method of promoting _Menticulture_, killing _Fearthought_, denouncing _Gluttony_, saving that _Last Waif_, and attaining _Happiness_ through learning the _A.B.-Z. of Our Own (Economic) Nutrition_.

GIVE THE BABIES A CHANCE

THE INSPIRING MOTIVE

The enthusiasm excited by a persistent study of the problem of human nutrition is inspired by the need of an intelligent scheme of information and instruction which may be understood by mothers and teachers for the benefit of children. Unlike the young of the lower animals, the babes of mankind have some years of dependent existence during which much unconscious murder is committed, and during which the innocents are more or less poisoned with bad suggestions that weaken them all through life. Colts, calves, pigs, chickens, and the like survive the period of dependence in much greater proportion than do the young of their human masters survive the infantile stage of existence, and this is largely due to the lack of basic or parent knowledge on the part of mothers relative to their own nutrition, and also a pitiable ignorance concerning the nutrition of their children, the double ignorance constituting a double crime.

Even if careless about ourselves, is it not shameful that we do not concentrate effort in learning the truth about our instinctive means of protection in our own alimentation and in classifying the knowledge in a way that will make it available to children, through their proper guardians, when they arrive in the world "as helpless as a babe"?

If knowledge which seems to be protective had not been evolved out of recent experiment, or if the hope of gaining such knowledge had not been collected from good authority, the appeal might seem futile; but this is not the case. The most intelligent and studious investigators are united in the belief that the problem can be scientifically solved and the confusion of ideas settled by concentrated personal and collective study of economic nutrition, through observation of the natural requirements, and by trial of the care in taking food which is necessary to secure the most profitable economies.

ILLUSTRATION

Here is an illustration, both of the present need of better knowledge and the hope of its attainment. It is an account of one accidental experience which showed that _excess of food_ may be as detrimental to a tiny baby dependant, as it is generally conceded to be harmful to grown persons. The case was described by Dr. Chadwick of Boston to Professor Bowditch, and by the latter repeated to the author. An infant was not progressing as it should and failed to gain normally in weight. It was under the charge of a nurse and was being carefully watched. A certain quantity of milk was prescribed for daily nourishment, at prescribed times, in a prescribed manner; but the child did not increase in weight and was "doing poorly." For some reason the nurse was changed and instructions were repeated by the old to the new nurse. In the course of a week the little patient showed signs of marked improvement, both in gain of weight and in general condition. In order to record the particulars of the change the physician questioned the nurse and learned that only one half the nourishment originally prescribed had been given, the new nurse having forgotten or misunderstood the orders.

The reason the little fellow had been "doing so poorly" under the original prescription was because he had been using up his puny strength getting rid of the excess of food that had been forced upon his little stomach and intestines. When the excess was stopped, so that his digestive apparatus could occupy itself with his real needs, the babe had a surplus of energy for growth and thrived as a rightly nourished child should do.

NOTE: In connection with the foregoing, reference is invited to the author's conception of how attention to one's personal economies, beginning with the economy of personal nutrition, is interrelated to general menticulture and the child-saving phase of our personal responsibility in child culture. Even if we are carelessly suicidal ourselves, we owe better care to innocent and dependent children. This will be found in the "Explanation of the A. B. C. Life Series" at the end of the book.

MUNCHING PARTIES AND THE CHEWING FAD

To the scientific person of ultra conservative bent of mind this free and easy screed, offered as the exponent of a great economic idea, will seem offensive, and justly so; but it has been written with a purpose, and happily the purpose is being effected as speedily as the author hoped for when his own discovery relative to the profitableness of an epicurean, economic nutrition became a reality of experience and suggested publication.

To this free presentation, couched in a variety of class expression, is due, in a large measure, the new revival of feeding reform which has spread far over the civilised world, where it was most needed, within the past five years.

Up to five years ago, and to some extent now, the prescription method of recommending diets was and is common. In fact it was universal up to a few years ago; for no one, as far as is known, had yet suggested that normal appetite was the _only_ competent prescriber, and that it was the office of the physician to teach his clients and patients how to normalise the appetite.

It required two years of the circulation of the original publications and the constant, persistent, personal assertion of the author before any continued credence of his assertions was secured, with the one exception of a lay friend in New York who happened to be in a state of great need of reform at the time, as related under the heading of "A Five Year's Lay Experience."

It was only about two years ago that the new claims had received sufficient recognition to admit of explaining them to busy men of prominence in the medical profession. After the confirmation at the laboratories of the University of Cambridge, England, the author had an opportunity to make a statement and give a demonstration to Sir Thomas Barlow, the private physician of King Edward VII. Sir Thomas was most sympathetic with the physiological possibilities, and there has been frequent evidence since to show that he pursued thought of the suggestions, and that his interest has been responsible for the aristocratic lay interest which originated the so-termed "Munching Parties" in London.

The English term "munching," signifying chewing or masticating, is an excellent amendment, which is gladly adopted. "Masticating" is technical and formal. "Chewing" has been disgraced by its application to gum and to tobacco, and the other English expression, "biting," suggests the carnivorous, savage use of the jaws and teeth, while "munching" implies enjoyment, as the munching of delicacies by children.