“Just a glass or so of beer and a sandwich or two,” I admitted. “They brought it out to us while we were talking in the yard. To tell the truth, I was feeling rather peckish.”
Dick made no answer, but continued to chew bacon-rind. Nothing I could say seemed to cheer him. I thought I would try religion.
“A dinner of herbs—the sentiment applies equally to lunch—and contentment therewith is better,” I said, “than a stalled ox.”
“Don’t talk about oxen,” he interrupted fretfully. “I feel I could just eat one—a plump one.”
There is a man I know. I confess he irritates me. His argument is that you should always rise from a meal feeling hungry. As I once explained to him, you cannot rise from a meal feeling hungry without sitting down to a meal feeling hungry; which means, of course, that you are always hungry. He agreed with me. He said that was the idea—always ready.
“Most people,” he said, “rise from a meal feeling no more interest in their food. That was a mental attitude injurious to digestion. Keep it always interested; that was the proper way to treat it.”
“By ‘it’ you mean . . . ?” I said.
“Of course,” he answered; “I’m talking about it.”
“Now I myself;” he explained—“I rise from breakfast feeling eager for my lunch. I get up from my lunch looking forward to my dinner. I go to bed just ready for my breakfast.”
Cheerful expectancy, he said, was a wonderful aid to digestion. “I call myself;” he said, “a cheerful feeder.”