These five years also have added time-proof to the personal experience of the author, and have added many confirmatory experiences to his own. Continued pursuit of the subject has also developed possibilities of endurance, efficiency, and happiness that were not known to exist in former times, so that we begin to doubt if the normal man or woman has been seen in the world since history has given us a record.
During these five years of study of the question, left incomplete in the present volume as first issued, only confirmatory evidence of the hopes expressed herein has been deduced. The author has had abundant opportunity to add experiences in England, Italy, and, in fact, all over Europe, and in this country, that strengthen the faith and call for action or guilt of infamous indifference. The work of Dr. Bernardo in England has progressed steadily, and each annual showing is better than the last, while the public demonstrations at Albert Hall, London, are becoming more intrinsically interesting than any other exhibitions or entertainments that are held in that great auditorium.
The Salvation Army work, too, has been closely inspected and followed, and, while its aims are more curative than preventive, and give promises in the future rather than in the immediate present, it cannot but meet with highest approval for what it does in a practical way among the degenerate. Quite recently General Booth has added a Department of Hygiene to his staff outfit, and the whole tendency of the work is improving and is already splendid. It is not yet broad enough, however, and does not deal with the basic necessities of complete nutrition reform applied to children.
The whole course of reform on charitable principles has been steadily progressive, but the most conclusive and convincing demonstration of possibilities, all the way from waif-saving to the last ultimate refinement of physical and mental reform, has been given us by two of the most modest and self-unconscious persons possible to imagine. To Dr. and Mrs. J. H. Kellogg, of Battle Creek, Michigan, we owe more than any of us can ever pay for a demonstration of humane possibilities, which proves the full contentions of this book most conclusively. Twenty-four of the most unfortunate of waifs, rescued and endowed with all the opportunity of respectable manhood and womanhood and good citizenship, is the record of this one little married but childless couple; and after that who shall ever dare to say that there should ever be any "Have-to-be-bad" persons to fill an altogether unnecessary "ten-per-cent-of-submerged-stratum" of society?
Some account of this family of true and practical salvation is given in the "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition" and in "The New Glutton or Epicure," and need not be repeated here, for without full appreciation of the contents of each of the books of the "A.B.C. Series" the argument of either is incomplete.
H. F.
Explanation of The A.B.C. Life Series
THE ESSENTIALS AND SEQUENCE IN LIFE
It would seem a considerable departure from the study of menticulture as advised in the author's book, "Menticulture," to jump at once to an investigation of the physiology and psychology of nutrition of the body and then over to the department of infant and child care and education as pursued in the crèche and in the kindergarten; but as a matter of fact, if study of the causation of human disabilities and misfortunes is attempted at all, the quest leads naturally into all the departments of human interest, and first into these primary departments.
The object of this statement is to link up the different publications of the writer into a chain of consistent suggestions intended to make life a more simple and agreeable problem than many of us too indifferent or otherwise inefficient and bad fellow-citizens make of it.
It is not an altogether unselfish effort on the part of the author of the A.B.C. Life Series to publish his findings. In the consideration of his own mental and physical happiness it is impossible to leave out environment, and all the units of humanity who inhabit the world are part of his and of each other's environment.