The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories
two ounces a day per person, the appetites were perfect. At the end of
fifteen days the dyspeptics, the invalid, and the most delicate ladies
in the party were chewing sailor-boots in ecstasy, and only complaining
because the supply of them was limited. Yet these were the same people
who couldn't endure the ship's tedious corned beef and sour kraut and
other crudities. They were rescued by an English vessel. Within ten days
the whole fifteen were in as good condition as they had been when the
shipwreck occurred.
'They had suffered no damage by their adventure,' said the professor.
'Do you note that?'
'Yes.'
'Do you note it well?'
'Yes--I think I do.'
'But you don't. You hesitate. You don't rise to the importance of it. I
will say it again--with emphasis--not one of them suffered any damage.'
'Now I begin to see. Yes, it was indeed remarkable.'
'Nothing of the kind. It was perfectly natural. There was no reason why
they should suffer damage. They were undergoing Nature's Appetite-Cure,
the best and wisest in the world.'
'Is that where you got your idea?'
'That is where I got it.'
'It taught those people a valuable lesson.'
'What makes you think that?'
'Why shouldn't I? You seem to think it taught you one.'
'That is nothing to the point. I am not a fool.'
'I see. Were they fools?'
'They were human beings.'
'Is it the same thing?'
'Why do you ask? You know it yourself. As regards his health--and the
rest of the things--the average man is what his environment and his
superstitions have made him; and their function is to make him an ass.
He can't add up three or four new circumstances together and perceive
what they mean; it is beyond him. He is not capable of observing for
himself; he has to get everything at second-hand. If what are miscalled
the lower animals were as silly as man is, they would all perish from
the earth in a year.'
'Those passengers learned no lesson, then?'
'Not a sign of it. They went to their regular meals in the English
ship, and pretty soon they were nibbling again--nibbling, appetiteless,
disgusted with the food, moody, miserable, half hungry, their outraged
stomachs cursing and swearing and whining and supplicating all day long.
And in vain, for they were the stomachs of fools.'
'Then, as I understand it, your scheme is--'
'Quite simple. Don't eat until you are hungry. If the food fails to
taste good, fails to satisfy you, rejoice you, comfort you, don't eat
again until you are very hungry. Then it will rejoice you--and do you
good, too.'
'And I am to observe no regularity, as to hours?'
'When you are conquering a bad appetite--no. After it is conquered,
regularity is no harm, so long as the appetite remains good. As soon as
the appetite wavers, apply the corrective again--which is starvation,
long or short according to the needs of the case.'
'The best diet, I suppose--I mean the wholesomest--'
'All diets are wholesome. Some are wholesomer than others, but all the
ordinary diets are wholesome enough for the people who use them. Whether
the food be fine or coarse it will taste good and it will nourish if a
watch be kept upon the appetite and a little starvation introduced every
time it weakens. Nansen was used to fine fare, but when his meals were
restricted to bear-meat months at a time he suffered no damage and no
discomfort, because his appetite was kept at par through the difficulty
of getting his bear-meat regularly.'
'But doctors arrange carefully considered and delicate diets for
invalids.'
'They can't help it. The invalid is full of inherited superstitions and
won't starve himself. He believes it would certainly kill him.'
'It would weaken him, wouldn't it?'
'Nothing to hurt. Look at the invalids in our shipwreck. They lived
fifteen days on pinches of raw ham, a suck at sailor-boots, and general
starvation. It weakened them, but it didn't hurt them. It put them in
fine shape to eat heartily of hearty food and build themselves up to a
condition of robust health. But they did not know enough to profit by
that; they lost their opportunity; they remained invalids; it served
them right. Do you know the trick that the health-resort doctors play?'
'What is it?'
'My system disguised--covert starvation. Grape-cure, bath-cure,
mud-cure--it is all the same. The grape and the bath and the mud make
a show and do a trifle of the work--the real work is done by the
surreptitious starvation. The patient accustomed to four meals and late
hours--at both ends of the day--now consider what he has to do at a
health resort. He gets up at 6 in the morning. Eats one egg. Tramps up
and down a promenade two hours with the other fools. Eats a butterfly.
Slowly drinks a glass of filtered sewage that smells like a buzzard's
breath. Promenades another two hours, but alone; if you speak to him
he says anxiously, “My water!--I am walking off my water!--please don't
interrupt,” and goes stumping along again. Eats a candied roseleaf. Lies
at rest in the silence and solitude of his room for hours; mustn't read,
mustn't smoke. The doctor comes and feels of his heart, now, and his
pulse, and thumps his breast and his back and his stomach, and listens
for results through a penny flageolet; then orders the man's bath--half
a degree, Reaumur, cooler than yesterday. After the bath another egg.
A glass of sewage at three or four in the afternoon, and promenade
solemnly with the other freaks. Dinner at 6--half a doughnut and a cup
of tea. Walk again. Half-past 8, supper--more butterfly; at 9, to bed.
Six weeks of this regime--think of it. It starves a man out and puts
him in splendid condition. It would have the same effect in London, New
York, Jericho--anywhere.'
'How long does it take to put a person in condition here?'
'It ought to take but a day or two; but in fact it takes from one to six
weeks, according to the character and mentality of the patient.'
'How is that?'
'Do you see that crowd of women playing football, and boxing, and
jumping fences yonder? They have been here six or seven weeks. They were
spectral poor weaklings when they came. They were accustomed to nibbling
at dainties and delicacies at set hours four times a day, and they had
no appetite for anything. I questioned them, and then locked them into
their rooms--the frailest ones to starve nine or ten hours, the others
twelve or fifteen. Before long they began to beg; and indeed they
suffered a good deal. They complained of nausea, headache, and so on. It
was good to see them eat when the time was up. They could not remember
when the devouring of a meal had afforded them such rapture--that was
their word. Now, then, that ought to have ended their cure, but it
didn't. They were free to go to any meals in the house, and they chose
their accustomed four. Within a day or two I had to interfere. Their
appetites were weakening. I made them knock out a meal. That set them up
again. Then they resumed the four. I begged them to learn to knock out
a meal themselves, without waiting for me. Up to a fortnight ago they
couldn't; they really hadn't manhood enough; but they were gaining it,
and now I think they are safe. They drop out a meal every now and then
of their own accord. They are in fine condition now, and they might
safely go home, I think, but their confidence is not quite perfect yet,
so they are waiting awhile.'
'Other cases are different?'
'Oh yes. Sometimes a man learns the whole trick in a week. Learns to
regulate his appetite and keep it in perfect order. Learns to drop out a
meal with frequency and not mind it.'
'But why drop the entire meal out? Why not a part of it?'
'It's a poor device, and inadequate. If the stomach doesn't call
vigorously--with a shout, as you may say--it is better not to pester
it but just give it a real rest. Some people can eat more meals than
others, and still thrive. There are all sorts of people, and all sorts
of appetites. I will show you a man presently who was accustomed to
nibble at eight meals a day. It was beyond the proper gait of his
appetite by two. I have got him down to six a day, now, and he is all
right, and enjoys life. How many meals to you affect per day?'
'Formerly--for twenty-two years--a meal and a half; during the past two
years, two and a half: coffee and a roll at 9, luncheon at 1, dinner at
7.30 or 8.'
'Formerly a meal and a half--that is, coffee and a roll at 9, dinner in
the evening, nothing between--is that it?
'Yes.'
'Why did you add a meal?'
'It was the family's idea. They were uneasy. They thought I was killing
myself.'
'You found a meal and a half per day enough, all through the twenty-two
years?'
'Plenty.'
'Your present poor condition is due to the extra meal. Drop it out. You
are trying to eat oftener than your stomach demands. You don't gain, you
lose. You eat less food now, in a day, on two and a half meals, than you
formerly ate on one and a half.'
'True--a good deal less; for in those olds days my dinner was a very
sizeable thing.'
'Put yourself on a single meal a day, now--dinner--for a few days, till
you secure a good, sound, regular, trustworthy appetite, then take to
your one and a half permanently, and don't listen to the family any
more. When you have any ordinary ailment, particularly of a feverish
sort, eat nothing at all during twenty-four hours. That will cure it. It
will cure the stubbornest cold in the head, too. No cold in the head can
survive twenty-four hours' unmodified starvation.'
I know it. I have proved it many a time.
CONCERNING THE JEWS
Some months ago I published a magazine article(1) descriptive of a
remarkable scene in the Imperial Parliament in Vienna. Since then I
have received from Jews in America several letters of inquiry. They were
difficult letters to answer, for they were not very definite. But at
last I have received a definite one. It is from a lawyer, and he really
asks the questions which the other writers probably believed they were
asking. By help of this text I will do the best I can to publicly answer
this correspondent, and also the others--at the same time apologising
for having failed to reply privately. The lawyer's letter reads as
follows:
'I have read “Stirring Times in Austria.” One point in particular
is of vital import to not a few thousand people, including myself,
being a point about which I have often wanted to address a question
to some disinterested person. The show of military force in the
Austrian Parliament, which precipitated the riots, was not
introduced by any Jew. No Jew was a member of that body. No Jewish
question was involved in the Ausgleich or in the language
proposition. No Jew was insulting anybody. In short, no Jew was
doing any mischief toward anybody whatsoever. In fact, the Jews
were the only ones of the nineteen different races in Austria which
did not have a party--they are absolute non-participants. Yet in
your article you say that in the rioting which followed, all classes
of people were unanimous only on one thing, viz., in being against
the Jews. Now, will you kindly tell me why, in your judgment, the
Jews have thus ever been, and are even now, in these days of
supposed intelligence, the butt of baseless, vicious animosities?
I dare say that for centuries there has been no more quiet,
undisturbing, and well-behaving citizen, as a class, than that same
Jew. It seems to me that ignorance and fanaticism cannot alone
account for these horrible and unjust persecutions.
'Tell me, therefore, from your vantage point of cold view, what in
your mind is the cause. Can American Jews do anything to correct it