One Third Off Part 3

Could he hope to tack and go about before he blew clear over into the next county? I doubt it.

And suppose he inflated himself for a party or a reception or something, and a practical joker put a tack in a chair and he sat down on it and had a blow-out. The thought is not a pretty one, yet the thing were possible.

From these crude beginnings I worked my way down toward the present day.

Doctor Banting, of England, the father of latter-day dietetics from whose name in commemoration of his services to mankind we derive the verb intransitive "to bant," had theories wherein his chief contemporaneous German rival, Epstein the Bavarian, radically disagreed with him. Voit, coming along subsequently, disagreed in important details with both. Among the moderns I discerned where Dr. Woods Hutchinson had his pet ideas and Doctor Wiley had his, diametrically opposed. So it went. There was almost as much of disputation here as there is when a federation of women's clubs is holding an annual election. It was all so very confusing to one aiming to do the right thing.

One learned savant flatly laid down the ultimatum that the individual seeking to reduce should cut out all pork products from chitterings clear through the list to headcheese and give his undivided support to the red meats and the white. One of his brethren was equally positive that I might partake of bacon and even ham in moderation, but urged that I walk around red meat as though it were a pesthouse. Yet a third--a foe, plainly, to the butcher, but a well-wisher to the hay-and-produce dealer if ever one lived--recommended that I should eliminate all meat of whatsoever character or color and stick closely to fodder, roughage and processed ensilage. I judge he sent his more desperate cases to a livery stable.

According to one dictum, bread was all right up to a certain point, and, according to another, all wrong. This man here held a brief for beans, especially the succulent baked bean; that man yonder served solemn warning upon me that if perversely I persisted to continue to eat baked beans the fat globules would form so fast I would have the sensation that a little boy was inside of me somewhere blowing bubbles. The writer didn't exactly say this, but it was the inference I drew from his remarks.

Eat dried fruits until your seams give, said Doctor A. Avoid dried fruits as you would the plague, counseled the equally eminent Doctor B. Professor C considered the drinking of water with meals highly inadvisable; whereas Professor D said that without adding an extra ounce of weight I might consume water until my fluid contents sloshed up and down in me when I walked, and merely by getting a young lady in Oriental costume to stand alongside me I might qualify at a Sunday-school entertainment for the entire supporting cast of the familiar tableau ent.i.tled Rebecca at the Well. He intimated that just so I stopped short of committing suicide as an inside job all would be fine and dandy. I do not claim that these were his words; this is the free interpretation of his meaning. Sink the knife in the b.u.t.ter to the very hilt--there will be no ill effects but only a beneficial outcome--declares such-and-such a food faddist. Eschew b.u.t.ter by all means or accept the consequences, clarions an earnest voice. Well, I never was much of a hand for eschewed b.u.t.ter anyway. We keep our own cow and make our own b.u.t.ter and it seems to slip down, just so.

In the vegetable kingdom the controversy raged with unabated fury. The boiled prune, blandest and most inoffensive of breakfast dishes, formed the basis of a spirited debate. There were pro-prunists and there were con-prunists. The parsnip had its champions and its antagonists; the carrot its defenders and its a.s.sailants. In this quarter was the cabbage heartily indorsed, there was it belittled and made naught of. The sprightly spring onion, already socially scorned in some of the best lay circles, suffered attack at the hands of at least one scientific and scholarly professional.

After reading his strictures I remarked to myself that really there remained but one field of useful popularity for the onion to adorn; in time it might hope to supplant the sunflower as the floral emblem of Kansas, as typifying a great political principle which originated in that state: The Initiative, when one took a chance and ate a young onion; the Referendum, while one's digestive apparatus wrestled with it; the Recall, if it disagreed with one. Alone, of all the vegetables, stood spinach, with not a single detractor. On this issue the vote in the affirmative practically was by acclamation. I am tin position to state that boiled spinach has not an enemy among the experts. This seems but fair--it has so few friends among the eating public.

I observed much and confusing talk of the value of nitrogens, proteids and--when I had reached the ultra-modernists--vitamines. Vitamines, I gathered, had only recently been discovered, yet by the progressives they were held to be of the supremest importance in the equation of properly balanced human sustenance. To my knowledge I had never consciously eaten vitamines unless a vitamine was what gave guaranteed strictly fresh string beans, as served at a table-d'hote restaurant, that peculiar flavor. Here all along I had figured it was the tinny taste of the can, which shows how ignorant one may be touching on vitally important matters. I visualized a suitable luncheon for one banting according to the newest and most generally approved formula:

=RELISH= MIXED GELATINOIDS

=POTAGE= STRAINED NITROGEN GUMBO

=ENTREE= GRILLED PROTEIDS WITH GLOBULIN PATTIES

=DESSERT= COMPOTE OF a.s.sORTED VITAMINES

Or the alternative course for one sincerely desirous of reducing, who believed everything he saw in print, was to cut out all the proscribed articles of food--which meant everything edible except spinach--and starve gracefully on a diet composed exclusively of boiled spinach, with the prospect of dying a dark green death in from three to six weeks and providing one's own protective coloration if entombed in a cemetery containing cedars.

Personally I was not favorably inclined toward either plan, so I elected to let my conscience be my guide, backed by personal observation and personal experimentation. I was traveling pretty constantly this past spring, and in the smoking compartments of the Pullmans, where all men, for some curious reason, grow garrulous and confidential, I put crafty leading questions to such of my fellow travelers as were over-sized and made mental notes of their answers for my own subsequent use. Since the Eighteenth Amendment put the nineteenth hole out of commission, prohibition and how to evade it are the commonest of all conversational topics among those moving about from place to place in America; but the subject of what a man eats, and more particularly what he eats for breakfast, runs it a close second for popularity.

For example, there is the seasoned trans-atlantic tourist who, on the occasion of a certain terrifically stormy pa.s.sage, was for three days the only person on board excepting the captain who never missed a single meal.

You find him everywhere; there must be a million or more of him; and he loves to talk about it, and he does.

But even more frequently encountered is the veteran drummer--no, beg pardon, the veteran district sales manager, for there aren't any drummers any more, or even any traveling salesmen; but instead we have district sales managers featuring strong selling points--I say, even more frequently encountered is the veteran district sales manager, wearing a gravy-colored waistcoat if a tasty dresser, or a waistcoat of a nongravy-colored or contrasting shade if careless, who craves to tell strangers what, customarily, he eats for breakfast.

I made it a point to study the proportions and hearken to the disclosures of such a one, and if he carried his stomach in a hanging-garden effect, with terraces rippling down and flying b.u.t.tresses and all; and if he had a pasty, unhealthy complexion or an apoplectic tint to his skin I said to myself that thenceforth I should apply the reverse English to his favorite matutinal prescription.

CHAPTER IX

_Adventure of The Fallen Egg_

So, having mapped out my campaign of attack against my fat, I rose one morning from my berth in the sleeping car and I dressed; and firmly clutching my new-formed resolution to prevent its escape, I made my way to the dining car and sat down and gave my order to the affable honor graduate of Tuskegee Inst.i.tute who graciously deigned to wait on me.

Now, theretofore, for so far back as I remembered, breakfast had been my heartiest meal of the entire day, with perhaps two exceptions--luncheon and dinner. Precedent inclined me toward ordering about as many pieces of sliced banana as would be required to b.u.t.ton a fairly tall woman's princess frock all the way down her back, with plenty of sugar and cream, and likewise a large porringer of some standard glutinous cereal, to be followed by sausages with buckwheat cakes and a few odd kickshaws and comfits in the way of strawberry preserves and hot b.u.t.tered toast and coffee that was half cream, and first one thing and then another. But Spartanlike I put temptation sternly behind me and told the officiating collegian to bring me plain boiled prunes, coffee with hot milk and saccharin tablets, dry toast and one dropped egg.

The prunes and the coffee were according to specifications, although, lacking the customary cream and three lumps of sugar, the coffee was in the nature of a profound disappointment. But a superficial inquiry convinced me that the egg was not properly a dropped egg at all.

Here was a fallen egg, if I ever saw one. I was filled with pity for it--poor, forsaken, abandoned thing, with none to speak a kind word for it! And probably more sinned against than sinning, too. Perhaps there was hereditary influences to be reckoned with. Perhaps its producer had been incubator raised, with no mother to guide her and only the Standard Oil Company for a foster parent. And what would a New Jersey corporation know about raising a hen?

Thus in sudden compa.s.sion I mused. To the waiter, though, I said:

"There has been a mistake here, alumnus. This egg never was meant to be dropped--it was meant to be thrown. Kindly remove the melancholy evidences."

He offered to provide a subst.i.tute, but the edge of my zest seemed dulled.

I made dry toast the climax of my chastely simple repast. It was simple and it was chaste, but otherwise not altogether what I should characterize as a successful repast. It lacked, as it were.

Let us pa.s.s along to noontime. Ere noontime came I was consumed with gnawing pains of emptiness. As nearly as I might judge, I contained naught save vast hollow s.p.a.ces and acoustics and vacuums and empty, echoing, neglected convolutions. Sorely was I tempted to relax the rigors of the just-inaugurated regime; n.o.bly, though, I resisted the impulse.

As I look back now on that day I find the memory of my suffering has dimmed slightly. The pa.s.sage of weeks and months has served to soften the harsh outlines of poignant recollection. What now in retrospect most impresses me is the heroism I displayed, the stark fort.i.tude, the grandeur of will power, the triumph for character. Sheer gallantry, I call it.

For my midday meal I had more dry toast, a reduced portion of boiled tongue and a raw apple--satisfying enough to some, I grant you, but to me no more than a tease to my palate. Long before three o'clock I knew exactly how a tapeworm feels when its landlord goes on a hunger strike.

Every salivary gland I owned was standing on tiptoe screaming for help; every little mucous membrane had a sorrow all its own. Each separate fiber of my innermost being cried out for greases and for sugars and for the wonted starchy compounds for to stay it and for to comfort it.

I underwent pangs such as had not been mine since away back yonder in August of 1914, in the time of the sack of Belgium, when the Germans locked up five of us for a day and a night in a cow stable where no self-respecting cow would voluntarily have stayed, and, then sent us by train under guard on a three-day journey into Germany, yet all the while kept right on telling us we were not prisoners but guests of the German Army. And at the end of the third day we reached the unanimous conclusion among ourselves that the only outstanding distinction we could see, from where we sat, between being prisoners of the German Army and guests of the German Army was that from time to time they did feed the prisoners. For throughout the journey the eight of us--since by now our little party had grown--lived rather simply and frugally and, I might say, sketchily on rations consisting of one loaf of soldiers' bread, one bottle of mineral water and a one-pound pot of sour and rancid honey which must have emanated in the first place from a lot of very morbid, low-minded bees.

However, in those exciting days there were many little moving distractions about to keep one from brooding o'ermuch on thoughts of lacking provender.

I boast not, but merely utter a verity, when I state that every time I shook myself I s.h.i.+fted the center of population. Where we had been the lesser wild life of midcontinental Europe abounded. In the matter of a distinction which had come to me utterly without solicitation or effort on my part I have no desire to brag, but in justice to myself--and my boarders--I must add that at that moment, of all the human beings in Central Europe, I was the most densely inhabited. My companions scratched along, doing fairly well, too; but I led the field--I was so much roomier than any one of them was.

But here aboard this Pullman on this, the dedicatory day of my self-imposed martyrdom, I could not lose myself as I had on that former historic occasion in the ardor of chasing the small game of the country.

By four o'clock in the afternoon I could appreciate the sensations of a conch sh.e.l.l on a parlor whatnot. I had a feeling that if anyone were to press his ear up against me he would hear a murmuring sound as of distant sea waves. Yet, mark you, I held bravely out, fighting still the good fight. This, then, was my dinner, if such it might in truth be called: Clear soup, a smallish slice of rare roast beef cut shaving thin, gluten bread spa.r.s.ely b.u.t.tered, a cloud of watercress no larger than a man's hand, another raw apple and a bit of domestic cheese--nothing rich, nothing exotic, no melting French _fromages_, no creamy Danish pastries.

Only when I reached my demi-ta.s.se, which I took straight, did I permit myself a touch of luxury. I lit my cigar with a genuine imported Swedish parlor match.

Followed then the first comforting manifestation, the first gratefully registered taste of recompense for my privations. I had to speak that night and in a large hall, too, and I found my voice to be clearer and stronger than usual, and found, also, that I spoke with much less effort than usual. I was sure partial fasting during the day was bearing fruits in the evening, and I was right, as subsequent evening experiences proved to me. I had rather dreaded that hunger gripes would make my night a sleepless one, but it didn't happen. I may have dreamed longing dreams about victuals, but I tore off eight solid hours of unbridled and--I dare say--uproarious rest.

CHAPTER X

_Wherein Our Hero Falters_

Next day I kept it up, varying the first day's menus slightly, but keeping the bulk consumption down, roughly, to about one-half or possibly one-third what my rations formerly had been. Before night of the second day that all-gone sensation had vanished. Already I had made the agreeable discovery that I could get along and be reasonably happy on from 35 to 50 per cent of what until then I had deludedly thought was required to nourish me. Before the week ended I felt fitter and sprier in every way than I had for years past; more alive, more interested in things, quicker on my feet and brisker in my mental processes than in a long time. The chronic logy, foggy feeling in my head disappeared and failed to return.

I may add that to date it still has not returned. Relieved of pressure against its valves--at least I a.s.sume that was what came to pa.s.s--my heart began functioning as I a.s.sume a normal heart should function, and at once the sense of oppression in the neighborhood of the heart was gone.

Within the same week I took most joyful note of the fact that I was losing flesh in the vicinities where mainly I craved to lose it amids.h.i.+ps and at the throat. I still had a double chin in front, but the third one, which I carried behind as a spare--the one which ran all the way round my neck and lapped at the back like a clergyman's collar--was melting away. And unless I was woefully mistaken, I no longer had to fight so desperate a battle with the waistband of my trousers when I dressed in the mornings.

I was not mistaken. Glory be and likewise selah! My first and second mezzanines were visibly shrinking. By these signs and portents was I stimulated to continue the campaign so auspiciously launched and so satisfactorily progressing.

I shall not deny that in the second week I did some backsliding. The swing of the tour carried me into the South. It was the South in the splendor of the young springtime when the cardinal bird sang his mating song. With brocading dandelions each pasture gloriously became even as the Field of the Cloth of Gold; and lo, the beginning of the strawberry shortcake season overlapped the last of the smoked-hog-jowl-and-turnip-greens period, and the voice of the turtle was heard in the land.

Figuratively, I was swept off my feet when a n.o.ble example of Southern womanhood put before my famished eyes the following items, to wit: About half a bushel of newly picked turnip greens, rearing islandwise above a slos.h.i.+ng sea of pot licker and supporting upon their fronded crests the boiled but impressive countenance of a hickory-cured shote, the whole being garnished with paired-off poached eggs like the topaz eyes of beauteous blond virgins turned soulfully heavenward; and set off by flankings of small piping-hot corn pones made with meal and water and salt and shortening, as Providence intended a proper corn pone should be made.

Then the years rolled away like a scroll and once again was I back in the Kentucky foothills, a lean and lathy sprout of a kid, a limber six-foot length of perpendicular appet.i.te; and it was twelve o'clock for some people, but it was dinner time for me!