Oatmeal has a wonderfully beneficial effect on the morality of men. You might spend an evening, as I have many times done, in those men’s quarters, and you would not hear a profane word or an objectionable sentence from the lips of any one of them. Those men nearly all go to Church on Sunday as regularly as they go to work on Monday. They are intelligent as a rule and demonstrate by their conversation that their diet has nourished the gray matter as well as their muscles.
If oatmeal acted so beneficial fifty years ago on the inhabitants of Scotland, it surely is a good argument that it will perform its duty on Americans just as well to-day.
Personally it would be immaterial to me if the wheat and sugar crops failed entirely, so long as I could have the dear old cereal that nourished me to manhood and the good will of a fine Jersey.
While oatmeal sustains the body and keeps it in fine condition, it certainly must exercise a powerful influence upon the brain. Sir Walter Scott was an oatmeal man. In intellect he was “one of them.” Sir David Brewster, the Royal Astranomer, who could scan with more than eagle’s eye the mighty creations in the bosom of space, was made mostly of oatmeal. Hugh Miller, that huge geological hammer, inscribed with Hebrew characters, was an oatmeal man. So was “Bobby” Burns, and the man does not live who can say that “Bobby” had no brains.
No argument can be brought to bear against oatmeal. If you believe what I say is true, why not put it to the test. I know it is a great problem to change the dietitic habits of a community—and much more so to change the habits of a nation. There are Scotchmen scattered everywhere, and no doubt they and their wives would supervise Oatmeal Clubs to teach the people how to make porridge properly and to overcome any prejudice they might have as to its use. No doubt it is an acquired taste, but when once learned it is for “keeps.”
When I first came to America I did not eat any tomatoes for years. I could not endure the taste, but gradually I took to them, and now I dearly enjoy them.
Many of my friends, through solicitation and my example, have adopted the oatmeal habit, and all of them are delighted with the result and intend to make it permanent.
Just imagine what conversation of food it would be if a vast multitude enlisted under the oatmeal banner. Meatless, wheatless, and surgarless days at least six days in the week for breakfast and supper. For dinner and on Sundays I should allow every one who wished to indulge in the fruit of the hen and the ham of the hog, or whatever delicacy might suit their individual taste.
The Duke of Wellington knew his business when he held in reserve the famous Scot’s Grey cavalry at the battle of Waterloo, until the psycological moment arrived when the French lines began to waver, then ordered the charge which sent them thundering on striking the enemy like an avalanch and thereby winning the battle. So in a modest way I think the psycological moment has arrived when the people of America will listen to what I say and began to cultivate the taste for oatmeal and use it liberally, thereby conserving food for the great emergency now and which will be more acute by and by.
It was oatmeal personified in the kilted Highlanders that scaled the heights of Alma and later stormed the Russian stronghold, Sebastopol. Oatmeal rode in the light brigade at Baladava, “charging an army while all the world wonder.” Oatmeal sang Annie Laurie thirty thousand strong in the Crimean trenches in front of Sebastopol on the eve of the grand assault.