much better go
hungry. To people who travel and must frequently take their meals in
railroad eating houses, I would say, get some bread and butter
sandwiches and eat them slowly while on the train. There is always a
chance to secure all you need to eat, too. You may not always be able to
sit an hour at the table--the time we should give to a meal if we eat as
we should. I know many object to this rule on the ground that if we
followed it we should get nothing else done. But that is nonsense. Did
not the Master of us all say, "Are there not twelve hours in the day?"
Then can we not devote three of the twelve to our food? If we have nine
hours in which we are at our highest efficiency, is it not good sense,
if we eat three meals a day, to give three hours to these meals? There
is only one sane answer to the question; we should take an hour for a
meal.

Every now and then some magazine writer will state that the chewing of
food to a cream does not help anybody. He will tell you that you can
swallow your food any old way and it will not hurt you in the least. In
fact, I actually saw an article in one of our leading periodicals
containing just such statements. We should, I suppose, have only pity
for an editor who would give space to such stuff, and should also pity
the poor wretch who by writing it is striving to attain notoriety. At
any rate there is one excellent thing about such lies, they do harm for
only a little while. When people find out that a thing is harmful to
them, they usually quit it, no matter how many notoriety seekers are
urging and encouraging them to keep on.

Usually the sufferer with "nerves" is the only one in the household who
will eat sparingly and chew his food slowly. But now and then I find an
intelligent, sympathetic man who will do so because it is helpful to his
wife. He sympathizes with her infirmity, and with fine self-denial eats
as she does. And note this: he usually derives benefit from so doing.
Time after time when I have put a nervous woman under this regimen, and
then her husband elected to go along with her, I have had the man come
to me and say: "Well, doctor, I declare I'm feeling a whole lot better
myself! I don't get sleepy any more during the daytime, and that pain I
used to have in the region of my liver is gone!" And so on and on.

The fact is just this: anybody who follows the rules that I learned to
apply in my own case cannot fail to be benefited. And although those not