the hardest, is that the friends all oppose
cutting down the daily food from the dreadfully mistaken impression that
weakness and debility from disease are the measure of the need to eat,
not the measure of the inability to digest.

Scores of times I have been written to by this class of patients as to
their troubles from friends in this way. Scores of times I have been
consulted as to the safety of this method in daily living for the old,
as if it were a tax upon the constitutional powers to stop sinning
against them! As well ask whether one may get too old as to make it
dangerous to cut down daily whiskey or daily labor that is clearly
beyond the reasonable use of the powers.

Those who are the victims of chronic diseases and have become greatly
enfeebled by overwork of body, mind, or stomach, will have to work out
their salvation with most discouragingly slow progress; but not to work,
not to try, is to invite the processes of disease culture.

Now, as to the time when that first meal of the day shall be taken.
Since the best meal of the day in all America with the great majority of
the people is at noon, this time may well be selected as the most
fitting. Since the man of muscle loses no time in taking his breakfast,
he should be able with good sense to rest an hour before this noon meal.

Those whose general energies give out earlier in the morning and do not
care to have general meals prepared in advance of the usual hour, can
put in the time in the best possible way by resting into power of relish
and digestion, the evil of eating when tired being that the exhausted
feeling is only increased.

Now think what forenoons may be had with no time lost over breakfasts,
none in thinking about the health or in doing anything for it, and not
only to have the best and strongest use of the reason, judgment, and
muscles, but also to have the best possible conditions for the cure of
ailings! Think, too, what it would be to the mothers of the land not to
have any need to go into their kitchens until the time to prepare the
noon meal arrived!

Can children while growing rapidly do without breakfasts? They certainly
can without a hint of discomfort, and be all the better for it in every
way.

A few months ago I spent some hours in Illinois, where the no-breakfast
plan had been practised for two years. When the plan was begun there was
a pale, delicate mother of four children, who was enduring a life that
had no cheer. D