axter actually kept a vegetarian dog. "Even carnivorous
animals thrive better on a vegetarian diet." But the dog was no
corroboration of his theory. It lacked gloss and shine to its coat, and
seldom barked.

One afternoon I came upon Dan, Baxter's son, puking in the bushes, not
far from the tents.

"What's the matter, Dan," he turned to me, wan, and serious, and with a
grown-up look on his face.

"Nothing! Only sometimes the warm milk father has me drink makes me
throw up. I'm on a milk diet, you know."

"Does your father know that you can't keep the milk down?"

"Mostly it does stay down ... I guess father's all right," he defended,
"maybe the diet will do me good."

"Do you ever get a beefsteak?"

"Father says meat is no good ... maybe he's right about killing animals.
He says it wouldn't be half so bad if everyone killed their own meat,
instead of making brutes out of men who do the killing for them ... but
it is kind of hard on the dog, though," and the little fellow laughed.

* * * * *

"I think my boy is going to become an engineer of some sort; he's always
playing about with machinery," Penton said to me....

"Suppose you let him take a trip with me to town, then? I'm going to
look through the Best o' Wheat factory this afternoon, and watch how
Best o' Wheat biscuits are made. Perhaps he'd like to see the machinery
working!"

"Johnnie, I'll trust him with you, if you'll promise me not to meddle
with his diet."

"Of course."

"I don't like people stuffing him full of candy and ice cream. I want
to bring him up with a good digestion and sound teeth."

* * * * *

Daniel took my hand as we went through the factory from department to
department. I enjoyed a paternal pride in the handsome, pale,
preternaturally intelligent little fellow.

"Look at the young father!" exclaimed one girl softly to another, with a
touch of pathos in her voice, intimating that perhaps I was a widower.

I blushed with pleasure to the tips of my ears, to be thought the father
of so prepossessing a child.

It delighted him to look into the huge bake ovens where first the wheat
was baked in big brown loaves, before it was broken up into biscuit
form. I thought of Hank Spalton and how he was supposed to have grown
strong on a diet of Best o' Wheat.

It was customary to serve sight-seers, in a dining room kept for that
purpose, with Best o' Wheat and cream, and