oon enough to
take advantage of the naturally recuperative effects of autumn. If he
could find himself recruiting in September, the month of October, I told
him, would produce on him a very decided change.

He went to work accordingly, but it was because it was a last resort,
and he must do so. It was not because he had much faith in me. Some of
his friends, it seems, had directed his attention this way; but when I
came to talk of the starvation plan of cure, to which I so much
inclined, both they and he revolted. However, he made a faint beginning.

I had foreseen most of the difficulties I had to contend with, and was
prepared to meet them. Thus, knowing full well that if I laid down the
laws of diet in great strictness, either as regards, quality or
quantity, he would be discouraged and do nothing at all, I permitted him
to use almost all kinds of food, and only insisted on a rigid adherence
to the great law, and avoiding medicine. These two points I made much
of, and explained them fully.

For example: I told him that all kinds of cookery or preparations which
prevented the necessity of teeth labor, such as soaking in milk, forming
into toast, mashing, or in any way softening, were wrong, and must be
avoided. Also, that all additions to our food, whether of foreign
bodies, such as pepper, mustard, vinegar, salt, etc., or of more
concentrated substances, such as molasses, sugar, honey, butter, gravy,
etc., should, for the same reason as well as others, be shunned as much
as possible.

When, therefore, said I, the question comes before your mind, whether
you may or may not eat a particular thing, consider first, whether its
use would be a violation of the general laws I have laid down for you. I
gave him many specific directions, at first, and yet continued to urge
it upon him to reason for himself.

But it seemed, for a long time, a hopeless case. He kept writing to me,
to know if he might eat toast, bread and butter, soup, milk, etc., or to
know why it was that he ought not to make additions of foreign or
concentrated substances, as of pepper, mustard, molasses, syrup, etc. I
have before me sixteen letters from him, in most of which his pleadings
abound, up to the very last but one. This fifteenth letter, dated
December 27, more than six months after my interview with him and first
prescription, has the following inquiries:--

"Will a diet do for me that admits of any pastry?--of pies, of any kind?
What _kind