Uncle Peabody was silent for a moment. “I wonder if I dare tell you what my whole scheme really is,” he said, at length.
“You can’t startle me any more than you did with your original proposition three years ago,” encouraged the professor, smiling. “At that time I could but consider you a physiological heretic.”
“Tesso,” said Uncle Peabody, deliberately, “the results of these experiments confirm me absolutely that I am on the right track. These revelations on the subject of nutrition are but the spokes of the great movement I have at heart—or perhaps, more properly speaking, they are the hub into which the spokes are being fitted. What I really hope and expect to do is to put education on a physiological basis, and to demonstrate that it is possible to cultivate progressive efficiency—that a man of sixty ought to be more powerful, physically and intellectually, than a man of forty. I can see no reason, logically, for one to retrograde as rapidly as men do now, but this depends upon his knowing how to run the human engine intelligently and economically and thus keeping it always in repair.”
“You astonish me, truly,” said Tesso, thoughtfully, “yet I can advance no argument except faulty human experience to refute your theory. In fact, you yourself are a living demonstration of its truth.”
“Then there would be no old age?” queried Helen.
“There would be age just the same,” replied Uncle Peabody, “but it would be ripe and natural age, with only such infirmities as come from accident; and less of these, since disease would find fewer opportunities to fasten itself upon its victims. If all the world knew what some know the death-rate could be cut in two, the average of human efficiency doubled, and the cost of necessary sustenance halved.”
“Mr. Cartwright,” said Professor Tesso, impressively, “if you succeed in carrying through this great reform of yours, even in part, you will be the greatest benefactor of mankind the world has known.”
“It is too large a contract to be carried through by any single one, but my confidence in the final outcome is based on the intelligent interest which others are taking in my work. I am glad you do not think the idea chimerical. It encourages me to keep at it with tireless application.”
“Dare I interrupt with so prosaic a suggestion as a cup of tea?” asked Helen, as there came a lull in the conversation.
“Mr. Cartwright has given me so much to think about that a little relaxation will be grateful,” replied the professor. “Perhaps you would be interested if I gave you an account of the experience which delayed me this afternoon?”