suffering from a nervous breakdown, for sixty days quit eating candy and
everything sweet except honey, and follow the other rules I have already
laid down. It may be that you will have to stick to this diet for three
months. But try it. That is exactly what cured all my bodily ills and
brought my soul out of the dark and gloomy night after everything else
had failed. I do not mean to say that this diet alone cured me, but I do
say it was the biggest factor in the cure. There are, however, some
other things that it would be worse than folly to ignore. This I shall
come to later. But just here I want to have it understood that this
thing of eating--how you eat, and how much you eat, and what you
eat--is of transcendent importance in the cure.

Of course, under some circumstances connected with cases of breakdown,
nothing but the good judgment of friends will avail. For example, the
question of how much one shall eat is something that not all the books
in the world nor all the physicians in the world can determine. I say,
always quit while you want a little more. I cannot say more or less than
that.

So many have written me recently asking just what I eat, that it may be
a help to some of them if I set down here just what I ate today. I ate
no breakfast at all. Sometimes I go for weeks without eating breakfast.
This is especially apt to be the case if I am engaged in writing a
magazine article or a book. I find my brain is much clearer and that I
can work much better when I eat no breakfast. But I do drink one or two
cups of very weak tea. I use just enough tea to color the water. Now I
do not advise everybody to go without breakfast. Some people tell me
that they have a headache unless they eat something. And some writers
say that if they do not eat a little breakfast they cannot write so
well. Thus you see where the question of common sense and using your own
judgment comes in. There are always a few things you will have to decide
for yourselves. At noon I ate about two handfuls of corn flakes with
milk and cream but no sugar, finishing with about four ounces of bread
pudding that had a little brown sugar in it. Now, in mid-afternoon, as I
write this, I am not hungry. Tonight I shall eat another dish of corn
flakes and some buttered toast and three or perhaps four good-sized
apples, I usually eat three or four apples a day. If I want a piece of
pie for lunch, I eat it, but I eat nothing else.

I live on the plainest