h I should have said: "Madam, when you have got through giving me
your especial attention I will begin my work--which, by the way, is not
your work but mine!" And, virtually, that is what her stomach did say.
Sitting bolt upright and consciously waiting for your food to begin
digestion is an over-attention to what is none of your business, which
contracts your brain, contracts your stomach and stops its work.

Our business is only to fulfill the conditions rightly. The French
workmen do that when they sit quietly after a meal talking of their
various interests. Any one can fulfill the conditions properly by
keeping a little quiet, having some pleasant chat, reading a bright
story or taking life easy in any quiet way for half an hour. Or, if
work must begin directly after eating, begin it quietly. But this
feeling that it is our business to attend to the working functions of
our stomachs is officious and harmful. We must fulfill the conditions
and then forget our stomachs. If our stomachs remind us of themselves
by some misbehavior we must seek for the cause and remedy it, but we
should not on any account feel that the cause is necessarily in the
food we have eaten. It may be, and probably often is, entirely back of
that. A quick, sharp resistance to something that is said will often
cause indigestion. In that case we must stop resisting and not blame
the food. A dog was once made to swallow a little bullet with his food
and then an X-ray was thrown on to his stomach in order that the
process of digestion might be watched by means of the bullet. When the
dog was made angry the bullet stopped, which meant that the digestion
stopped; when the dog was over-excited in any way digestion stopped.
When he was calmed down it went on again.

There are many reasons why we should learn to meet life without useless
resistance, and the health of our stomachs is not the least.

It would surprise most people if they could know how much unnecessary
strain they put on their stomachs by eating too much. A nervous invalid
had a very large appetite. She was helped twice, sometimes three times,
to meat and vegetables at dinner. She thought that what she deemed her
very healthy appetite was a great blessing to her, and often remarked
upon it, as also upon her idea that so much good, nourishing food must
be helping to make her well. And yet she wondered why she did not gain
faster.

Now the truth of the matter was that this invalid had a ne