“And it’s such a beautiful morning to sleep,” said I.
But as verse after verse rolled out sonorously, sleep fled from the room in dismay, and we followed, and for the first time since we had come to the country, found ourselves as one might say, up before breakfast. The morning air was delightful, but we knew the danger that lurks in morning air on empty stomachs—or we thought we knew it. If there is no danger in such exposures I make my humble apology to those who hold the contrary opinion. Personally I do not know what is right to do—that is, hygienically right to do, at any given moment.
May I be forgiven for digressing at this point, in order that I may touch on a topic that has been near my heart for a long time, but has never had a chance for utterance before. I was brought up to believe that water with meals was a very bad thing, so I went without water at meals, and thrived like a green bay tree.
One day a doctor told me that water with meals was the one thing needed to bring out the tonic properties of food.
I immediately began to drink water with my meals in perfect trust and confidence, and—I continued to thrive like a green bay tree.
When I was a boy, I was told that tomatoes were exceedingly bad; that they had no nutritive qualities, and that it was but a few short years since they had been called “love apples” and had rightly been considered poisonous.
With unquestioning faith I refrained from eating the juicy vegetables and remained free from all the diseases that follow in their train. I had not tasted a tomato, and I did not know what I was losing.
One day when feeling a little off my feed, a young doctor friend said, “What you need is the acid of a tomato.”
With an unfaltering trust I approached a tomato and ate it and realized the many, many years that were irrevocably gone; years in which I might have eaten the succulent fruit—for a tomato is a fruit; there’s no question of it.
After that day I made a point of eating tomatoes whenever I could and I remained free from the diseases that had been said to follow in their train.