Class. _J> 14 7 Book 'b ^ 4 )Opyriglit]^^_ COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. S/L^J-^^^-^ Xw^ THE AET OF LIVING BY / ELLEN aOODELL SMITH, M.D. *' Get health, for sickness is a cannibal that eats up all the life and youth it can lay hold of, and absorbs its own sons and daughters." —Emerson. AMHEEST, MASS., U.S.A. PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR. 1903. THE LIBRARY OF | CONGRESS, 1 Two Copies Received MAR 17 1903 Copyright CLASS '^ Entry XXc. No. COPY B. X X •y Copyright, 1902, by Ellen Goodell Smith. Tress of Spkinofielr Printing and Binding Compant, SrniNGFiELD, :Mass. TO aiY VALUED FRIEND, EDWARD HOOKER DEWEY, M.D., WHOSE PRACTICAL SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT IS LEAD- ING MILLIONS AWAY FROM THE SELF-BONDAGE OF APPETITE, AND THUS EMANCIPATING WOMAN FROM PERSONAL AND DOMES- TIC SERVITUDE, THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED. OONTEIJrTS. PART I. Introductory, xix A letter — The desire of women for physiological instruc- tion — Why are there thousands of irresponsible national guests — A problem for the consideration of philanthropists and conservators of the race — The dependence of man upon woman's ability to mold and educate the race — The impor- tance of her work in creating the child-world to live out the highest ideals. PARLOR TALKS WITH WOMEN. The Ideal Temple of the Human Soul, - - - 3 The importance of good material — Our homes and condi- tions now and in the future — Why is reform expensive — How to improve by Health Culture in the Kitchen — Woman's in- fluence in the home when she is a model of health. The Way in and Out, - 7 W^hy the lack of common sense in feeding the race — Nega- tive food — How fashion decrees our customs — The army of cooks — The despair of the housewife — The cook and doctor partnership — How disease gets in and becomes "old age mat- ter" — How to get it out — Why we eat — Expense of dirt and rubbish eaten — How we pay for luxuries. Our Eating Habits, 12 Eating a fine art — ^IVIastication — Nutrition — Dr. Dewey's new physiology — Objections to it — One and two meals a day — Ancient customs — Popularity of "No-Breakfast" — Its ad- X co:srTENTS. vantages — Relief to women — Light suppers — Objections an- swered — Losing flesh and growing young. THE SCIENCE OF LIVING. Important Paper by Edward Hooker Dewey, M.D., - 17 How the Science of Living is taught in cookbooks — Facts about the brain — Its relations to the body — How bodily pow- ers are restored — New physiology — Stomach a machine — The brain a dynamo — What food is and its office — Self-feeding power of brain — Illustrative cases — Condition of body and mind after sleep — When shall we eat — What shall we eat — Hunger — Acid fruits — Meats — Food after fasting — How shall we eat — Food not a source of energy — Underweight — Overweight late in life — Thirst — Alcoholics — Digestive en- ergy — Insanity — How to attain the highest health. Personal Experience, - - ----- 24 Early life — In a sanitarium — ^A student — College — Lecture trips — Progressive methods — Success — Developing "massage" — Pioneer work — Original methods — Work as teacher — Vege- tarianism — Flesh eating — Illustration — The diet question — "Sure cures" — Improved methods — Rest — A letter — Experi- ence with the sick on the "No-Breakfast" plan — Personal ex- perience — Literary work — One meal a day — Old age — Youth in age — How to cultivate it. Variety in Food, - - 32 The results of complex feeding — Benefit the doctor and the imdertaker — Description of a dinner in 1711 — Fussiness about food — How to cure it — Lost appetite — Hov\^ to find it — Invalid's tray — Fruitarians in California — Bread and fruit — Vegetables — Animal food — Change from complex to plain diet. Who are Vegetarians and What is a Hygienic Diet ? - 37 Phases of the question — Divisions — Fish eating vegeta- rians — Not so inhuman to kill the fish — Altruism — An inci- dent — Animal products — The cow and the hen — The Japan- COJS^TEis^TS. Xi ese — The Chinese — Fine points in dietetics — Meat not neces- sary — "Healthy Food"" not always the best — Dietetic rocks — Substitutes for meat — Animal names for mixed dishes — Hy- gienic dietary — Well cooked foods — No one rule that will apply to all — Errors in excessive use of nitrogenous foods — Science or sentiment the foundation of theories — The force of truth — The ideal code of dietetic ethics. Sun-Cooked or Raw Food, ------ 43 Classes of cooks — Nothing new — Ancient priests — The first professional cook — Primitive man and his habits — Argu- ments for not cooking — The raw foods we eat — Edenic diet — No kitchen, no cook — Rich concentrations — Animal prod- ucts — Destructive qualities in raw or cooked food, which and why — How to get in and out of dietetic errors. Atmospheric Food, - - - - - - - - 48 Not a new patent — Very much alive — Many people refuse it — What there is in it besides just air — The freest and cheapest of all foods — Living on odors of food, trees, and plants — Health seekers after air food — It 's right at our doors, "ready for immediate absorption"' — Business air, church air, home air, hospital air, the air of health, illness, hurry and worry — The air of people we meet, the doctor, the nurse — Great importance as food — Economy of it — Invisible food — Highly organized elements in air — Undreamed-of changes to come in the near future — Not a dream. The Staff of Life. -------- 54 Then and now — Improved methods — Poor bread and in- temperance — How to test flour — Bad bread — Good bread — French bread — Vienna bread — Sour bread — Ignorant cooks — Luck — The science of bread making — The art of making good bread — Graham flour — Its poor quality and why — How to select the best — Flour of entire wheat — Its origin and value. Xll CONTENTS. PART II. HEALTH CULTURE COOKING. Bread Making, ------ 61 Yeast bread — White, entire wheat and Graham — How te make it, and the importance of best material and baking it well done — Breads raised with baking powder, how made, baked and steamed. Unleavened Breads, 65 Graham, entire wheat and corn — Gems, biscuit — Rolls — Wafers — Diamonds — Mush rolls — Brown bread — Zwieback. Cereals, ---------- 70 Their food value — The mouth a predigesting laboratory — How to cook and eat cereals. Vegetables, - 73 Their value, quality and best methods of cooking to pre- vent waste of nutriment — How to cook all green vegetables — Legumes, their nutritive value and methods of cooking when ripe — Legume soups and purees. Fruits, - - - - 81 How to eat them raw and how best to cook them — Caution in commercial canned fruits — General directions for canning — Tomatoes — Fruit juices — Dried fruits, how to prepare them for the table — Dangers in commercial dried fruits, jams, jellies and marmalades. Animal Foods, - ------ 85 Modern methods of cooking them burdensome — Making it easy — Value of flesh foods — Milk — Eggs — What they are — Excessive use injurious — Care of animals — Cold storage, canned and salted meats. Meat Cookery, - - - - - - - - 87 How to roast, boil, stew and broil — Fowls — Fish — Albu- men and its value — Eggs, omelets, poached and jellied — Soups, purees and stews. COXTEJs^TS. Xlll Nuts as Food, . . . - - 92 Their use in place of meat — What to do without them — How to prepare them for the table. Vegetable Oils and Fried Foods, ----- 94 Better methods than frying — Best fat to use — Purity and economy in vegetable oils — Olive oil, Wesson oil and Ko-Nut — How made and where. Salads, . - . - 96 Their antiquity — Composition — Seasonings — Mixtures. Seasonings and Condiments, ------ 97 Why natural flavor cannot be restored by seasoning — Careless methods of cooking — Sugar — Fruit flavors — Liquors — Spices — Stored up refuse and the results. Desserts, . - . _ . ... 99 Why we have them — Woman the caterer — Reversing cus- tom — A burden to the cook — Flesh formers — Something in place of them. Pastries, 101 How plainly made. Cake, - . - I02 Time consumed in making it — Why we have it 305 nights in the year — Making sweets. Composition of Food Products and Food Combinations 103 Waste in food products — Prof. Atwater's table of waste — Elements obtained from food — Combinations — Animals make their own until civilized — Primitive man^Civilized man — Artificial chemist — Appetite — General rules — Practical ap- plication — Nuts — Meats — Digest food in the mouth and why — Words of caution to vegetarians — Legumes — Balancing diet. Summing up the Cooking Department, - - - 108 The products used — How this cookery is adapted to all XIV CONTENTS. classes of dietists — Animal products; how obtained — Milk drinking — Objections answered — Reduction of labor — Chil- dren's diet — Too much lunching, and why — Lady Henry Somerset on evils of drink among women — Inhuman to chil- dren, why — Social burdens of women — Inhuman to them- selves — The new woman. PART III. THOUGHTS LEADING TOWARD PRACTICAL IDEALS. Pearls of Wisdom from the writings of Jos. M. Wade, Edi- tor and Publisher of "Fibre and Fabric,''' Boston, - - 115 Educators from HoRxVce Fletcher's book, "Glutton or Epi- cure." Author of several books. Published by Herbert S. Stone & Co., Chicago, 12a Social Chats with My Friends, the Young Home Makers. Building and Furnishing the Home, - - - 124 Location — Comfort — Ventilation — Sleeping rooms — Sun Parlor — Library — Bric-a-brac — Draperies — Living rooms — Plants — Dining room — Kitchen — ^]VIodel pantry — Heating and other things pertaining to the house that is a home. Sanitation in the Home, 127 Fruits — Drinks — The sink — Fumigation — Lamps — Food — Care of things — Death in Kisses — Meats — Vegetables — How to drink — The dishcloth — Fevers — Rubbish — Close rooms — Air — Poisons in fabric furnishings — Sensitive people — Tow- els — Handkerchiefs, how to cleanse them — Combs and brushes — Beds — Money — Pets and children — Thought sanitation. The Cook Stove and the Fire, 135 Save the Body and Use the Brain, - - - - 137 What Shall We Do.? 140 The Care of Food, 143 Clearing the Table and Dish Washing, - - - 144 CONTENTS. XV Economy in Food Supplies, 145 Drinks, - - - ^^8 Sunday Dinners, -------- 150 Courtesy at Home, - - - - - - " - 152 The Perils in Fat and How to Dispose of It, - - 153 Hints for all the obese. Work and Duty, - ■ - 155 Brief Refreshments for Leisure Moments, - - - 156 Prepare to Live, 1^5 Length of life increasing — What our aim should be — Where does the blame lie ? — Why it "s never too late to pre- pare to live — Our pet infirmities — How to dispose of them — Unconscious suicides — Living to die one of the occupations of the race — Public educators — The world a theater — Paus- ing at the half century milestone and counting the gray hairs and wrinkles— In our prime then— The orderly temple — Its needs — A special message for all readers. PREFACE Only a minority of the human family have made a study of the Art of Living to live. With the majority the art of living to die has become contagious. With the great masses there has been no real principle in- volved, except that of existence or staying here, and the gratification of every phj^sical sense, until the animal has assumed control of the man or the spiritual. To educate into life in all its glorious possibilities and make intelligent use of its abundant resources are within the comprehension of the present intelligence of the race. This book is written in response to a call that would not be silenced, for a plain, practical method of teaching and living that will lead to a higher development in every direction. To making books there is no limit. Except as a teacher along progressive lines, the list would not be increased by this addition. The title suggests cooking, but that is only a small part of the book. We are flooded with books that teach this art, and the major- ity of the teachings lead toward the contraction rather than the expansion of life. Through ignorance — the greatest of all sins — the de- mand has become great, almost assuming a mania, for this destructive instruction. Some of the wisest and best who supply the demand are specimens of health and do not hesitate to tell us they would be ill should they live according to their own health-destroying formulas. XVlll PREFACE. At the same time they do much good in various waySj, and strive to educate in the right direction, and for those who desire to be liberated, education is the only way out. Those who prefer the bondage of illness, suffering, and sacrifice of themselves, of their friends in care and anx- iety for them, and of their means to meet the expense, that they may live but half a life in a half dead body must continue until they realize by some sharp expe- rience that it is not making the most and best of life to suffer in either body, soul or purse. This book deals with some of the living topics of the day in the form of brief essays. Dr. Edward Hooker Dewey, the pioneer in giving to the world a new physiol- ogy in the Art of Living, and whose books should be found in every home, has attracted the attention of some of the most learned physicians at home and abroad and met with their hearty approval. By special request he has contributed to this book a chapter of scientific wis- dom that will be studied with deep interest and its full value received when practically applied. The cooking department, so elaborate in other books, in this which means better health and longer life for the race is plain, condensed, and sufficiently ample to meet all family needs. Aids for the housewife and educating brevities on a variety of helpful topics are made practical in this book^^ that aims to teach the constructive Art of Living. Ellen Goodell Smith. Amherst, Mass., U. S. A., January, 1903. INTRODUCTORY. " Let no one presume to give advice to others that has not first given good advice to himself."— Se/icca. LooKiXG over some papers yellow with time, and also thinking about the introduction to this book, my eyes fell upon the following letter : — "St. Paul, July 15th, 1870. ■^^Mrs. E. G. Smith, M. D. : "Dear Madam — We, the undersigned, fully appreciat- ing the great importance of a more general diffusion of physiological knowledge among our own sex, would sin- cerely request, if not incompatible with your professional engagements, that you deliver in this city one or more lectures on subjects pertaining to health, at such time and place as may suit your convenience." Then follows a long list of names, many of them the most prominent in the city. As if by magic a familiar scene rose before me, including a large expectant audi- ence of women seeking instruction in the ways of health for themselves and their families. Xever in all my pre- vious Avork had I found a more progressive and wide- awake body of women than were those whom I met in the infant city of St. Paul, Minn. As they, by adopting better methods of treatment and living, were restored to health and taught how to remain in health, the oft-recurring question — not only from XX INTRODUCTORY. women but from men — was, "Why have not our family physicians told us these things?" "Have you asked them?" "Yes, but they often evade a direct reply, and we are now finding out that if they had taught us many things we ought to know we never should have developed such physical conditions as are ours to-day." Women have made a demand for this book. Many of them are representative women, seeking not only self- improvement but to improve the race. In frequent con- versations with them they have admitted their inability to cope successfully with existing conditions that con- stantly demand time, energy, sympathy, and purse. To- day their vision extends and embraces a broader and more practical method of work. Their eyes have been opened to facts that now confront us with a mighty force that somehow must be met. We have been waging a fearful warfare of aggression against conditions that meet us at every step. The results, although satisfac- tory for a time, have not been permanent, and these ques- tions arise : Why such an excess of crime, criminals, and prisons? Why is the world always preparing for war instead of peace? Why are sanitariums, hospitals, and homes crowded with invalids, insane, cripples, imbeciles,, and other irresponsibles ? Why do we continually expect and prepare for the care of unfortunates ? Why punish,, correct, suppress, and so court a repetition of the condi- tions we try in vain to remedy? Wise men tell us "we are what we eat." Yet science has never labored so in- dustriously to discover the hidden mysteries for the proper development of the race through suitable food. Pliysicians multiply so rapidly oue is led to believe- the entire world is in need of their services. The legal INTKODUCTORY. XXI profession increase and ply their vocation with untiring zeal. The ministry and methods for healing the souls and improving the morals of the race were never so plen- tiful, well organized, and financially equipped as at the present time. Health and sanitary boards arise almost "in a night" and unmercifully pursue the fatal "mi- crobes," and yet the tide of untimely death sweeps on. Poverty and crime are still with us, and luxurious crimi- nals leave palatial mansions for the kindly shelter of dungeon walls. For the protection and care of the thousands of these distinct classes of the nation's guests, we support insti- tutions that never should obtain standing room in a civilized nation, and should cause us to blush with shame that they are necessary for the moral, physical, and na- tional safety of an enlightened people. Instead of this, however, we ^^oint with pride to the huge and expensive mauseoleums that often occupy and overlook the most magnificent in nature's varied landscape and in which are buried millions of living victims. A nation that indulges in such luxuries (?) should never mention "hard times," but rather consider where and how the money goes, then bear in mind that hard times would be impossible to a healthy, happy, and tem- perate people. But this desirable condition will never be reached until we consider cause and effect in a broader light than has yet been generally recognized by the most wise and learned philanthropists. There must exist and be in active operation causes with which public servants and conservators of health, order, and morals are not familiar. Time and money might be more wisely expended should they turn their XXn INTFtODUCTOllY. attention to the Art of Living and seriously consider if we as a nation can afford to support existing conditions and also what makes them necessary and an inseparable part of the body politic. The way of relief would no longer lead toward an invitation of the conditions we would improve and banish into oblivion, but rather to- ward the true Art of Living for the best education and highest development of the entire human race. In these pages will be found the key that opens the door to a practical demonstration of truth, which the readers may apply to their daily life. The author is a thorough optimist, never presenting negative conditions except by way of illustration or as an object lesson. The body was designed to be so thoroughly well that it would care for itself without such a vast amount of time and energy being spent in giving attention to it. Care it needs like any other piece of mechanism, but less work, thought, and worry about it. This book is out of the ordinary line, and in its con- struction, originality and condensation, it will appeal to all readers. The cuisine is practical, thoroughly American, and health-inducing rather than disease- inviting. To meet the requirements of all, different lines of diet have been discussed, according to each their special merits. Although animal food is not considered the worst nor the best, yet, to meet the needs of all, a chapter on animal foods and plain methods of cooking them is also included. The luxuries of civilization have led us into bewilder- ing complexities and | erplexities of "riotous living.'' It is time to call a halt and return like the "prodigal son,"' not to the feast of the fatted calf of luxurious living, of INTRODUCTORY. Xxiii which we have enjoyed ( ?) a surfeit, but to the simplicity of well prepared nutritious foods that build and repair the human temple. With this object in view, the authors thoughts are sent to her friends and sister co-laborers in the emanci- pation of woman from domestic servitude, and through her to remove the badge of ancestral bondage to ill- advised dietetic customs. Upon us the future waits. We are an important fac- tor in the propagation and continuation of the species. We prepare the soil for the growth and development of the race. Is it not then of the utmost importance that the predigested food that lays the foundation of the embryo race, and builds the habitation of the expanding infant soul, be of the best and purest quality ? Women are persistent, insistent, and successful in carrying out whatever they in earnest attempt, no matter what the obstacles in the way. Then why not in this matter of Health Culture through the Art of Living that shall produce a superior quality of people? To us, mankind looks for the creation and molding, through education and influence, the childhood race. With such confidence in our power, with its responsibilities, and its wonderful possibilities, let us not forget that within the real, or what we call the realities of life, is grown the seed that germi- nates and reaches out toward the development of ideals,, be they high or low. What we enjoy to-day is the result of the ideals begun by those before us. What those- who come after us enjoy will be the ideals formed as begun to be by the men and women whom we help to» create. Part 1. PARLOR TALKS WITH WOMEN The influence of woman is beyond estimate. Keep it on the right side of men. Feed them, as well as yourselves and your children, on the sub- stantial bread of life, then we may expect to a«ld Peufect Health to the marvels of twentieth century progress. THE IDEAL TEMPLE OF THE HUMAN SOUL. '• Ye are the temple of God." Everything in the material world has its first crea- tion in the spiritual or invisible world. Our homes are our spiritual ideals materialized and brought in touch with our physical senses. When we desire to build a material home in which to locate we first idealize the building that later, under the touch of scientific and skillful artists, stands before us the creative embodi- ment of our ideal be it high or low. To create the human temple we should also have an ideal and endeavor to make ourselves conform to the highest standard possible. To do this successfully re- quires the best material with which to build. But in building we rarely stop to consider an ideal of just how we desire to look or how perfect the temple should be in all its parts so wonderfully and harmoniously adjusted by the Divine Architect. God-made human temples are one thing, man-made human temples are quite at vari- ance with the original design, and fall far short of their highest development. The majority of our homes are filled with the results^ of catering to the negative wants, not the positive needs^ of the human temple. But the day is dawning when the •Goddess of Wisdom with the light of experience will con- 4 THE ART OF LIVING. sume the desire for catering unwisely, the hours of labor will diminish, and all work will become a pleasure. This means time for undeveloped souls to develop and educate themselves according to their ideals that have been nearly smothered by the heavy relentless hand of toil, mental and physical, that often is entirely unnecessary. This means, too, that we shall cease following along tra- ditional lines, fixing up and patching up our human temples and then wondering why they are not in first- class order. Health is our first right and just as much of it as we are capable of manufacturing. The body should be so well made and cared for, so completely charged with health from head to foot, that there will be no room for the tenant called Pain and his numerous offspring. None but ourselves can set the limit and each must be a law unto himself as to his mode of cultivation. Rules may be formulated for general observance but, as each per- son has an individuality of his own, he will from neces- sity create certain laws that pertain to himself. Hence he cannot justly say to another, "This is the only way," neither can he in justice to himself say that he has reached the top or that his present methods are not sub- ject to improvement. To reform the world has proven expensive along every line. To improve and teach will produce far more sat- isfactory results. There is no business in the world con- ducted in such an unscientific, unpractical manner as the formation of human temples. They are builded of in- ferior material, without thought, pattern, or model. Hence the world has been overwhelmed with the work, care, and responsibility of trying to re-form or make THE IDEAL TEMPLE OE THE HUMAN SOUL. 5 over that which should have been better made before materializing in visible form. When, where, and by whom shall the higher ideals begin to take form if not through the men and women of the ever-present now with its grand opportunity ? The bodily temple must be huilded from good material that its foundations be en- during. Muscle, brain, nerves, and organs must be fed from the living fountain of blood, and this is made from the products of the cook rooms all over the land ; be it good or not it must build and keep the temple in repair. The culture of health or sickness in the home begins in the kitchen, and what we eat tells the story of what we are. In our kitchens and dining rooms are prepared the temples inclosing the souls that create communities, states and nations. From the homes go forth every day the toiling millions who have been preparing for the im- mense work of the world in every line of activity. Woman is the home maker. She is also largely the creator of customs, and her rapid growth and develop- ment along all lines she chooses to touch with her pres- ence have made her a powerful influence. If then, with all her up-to-date physical drawbacks, she is capable of such influence, where will she stand when she restores to herself her birthright Health in its perfect meaning? When she is no longer in the toils of physical torture, the victim of numberless ills, the slave of disease labeled with a thousand names, that demand an ever-increasing army of physicians to meet the ceaseless cry for relief from Pain — avoidable if only she knew it, and no part of the Divine plan. It is time to wake up, walk out from this bondage, extend our hand to man, demand the highest and best in 6 THE ART OF LIVING. him, and cease peopling the earth with an army of weak- lings, who cannot help dying young, because we have not yet learned the positive law of life that creates their bodies good enough to live in ! Mental stupidity and ignorance have been in the ascendency. A few clearer heads arise now and then, strike a better way, that causes the world first to gape and stare — "Oh ! ah ! another fad," — but later to bring up the rear. We cannot set our ideals too high for these temples of the soul. How vital that they represent all that is best in the present manhood and womanhood, that the future may more nearly meet the Divine requirement. THE WAY IN AND OUT. •• One pound of learning requires ten pounds of common senso to ^pply it." There is nothing in all the world's economies where the above saying is more applicable than in the Art of Living, and none where common sense is so often defi- cient even to stupidity. It would be the part of wisdom to spend as little time and effort in cookery as possible, but the reverse is true. The cooks manipulate the living products into things of death and call them food. Not a farmer in all the land would dare feed the animals under his care with such impoverished food as is daily set upon his own table. One need not look outside of his own home to prove that in our kitchens are manufactured from the very best material the things that cannot but produce the negative conditions of gluttony, intemperance, disease, and death. Those are the best cooks who can make the most pala- table and nutritious dishes from the fewest materials, and this would be real hygienic or health culture cook- ery. Everything would be so excellent in its simplicity it would not require the addition of various doses of this, that, and the other to perfect its quality. But this cus- tom has not yet taken a very firm grasp upon those who prepare our food. Hence we find a surplus of negative food, — bread sour or half baked, vegetables ruined, meats badly cooked, fruits doctored into sweet, sticky, indi- gestible deceptions, and pies, cakes, and puddings that would give a hyena the dyspepsia ! It has come to this that unless one keeps right in line 8 THE ART OF LIVING. with combination cookery and foreign names he would be puzzled to select a dinner from the modern improved menu. Simplicity long since gave place to the decree of custom, that fashions our dishes to meet the demand of the cultivated civilized appetites of the race. Our food is pattied, bisqued, souffled, stuffed, creamed, Lyonnaised, spiced, pickled, and frizzled almost to death's door be- fore it appears upon the table. The once well furnished pantry has become a wareroom of implements, many of them labor-makers instead of labor-savers. Every spare corner is tilled with bottles, boxes, packages, holding mysterious contents that are supposed in some magical way to improve our food, but really disguise it in such a negative way that often one cannot tell from the taste what the foundation article was. Perhaps the army of cooks in the world exceeds in num- bers any other, but in the matter of drill they are away below the standard of a good workman, and but few, comparatively, approach the word "excellent." But the cook should stand at the top, and if not there, it should be her ambition to get there as soon as possible, and when she thoroughly understands her business there need be no clashing between the housewife and her helpers. To- day we are compelled to install the untutored foreigners in our kitchens, teach them if we can, and endure them because we must. By the time we have them well under way they inform us they are going to leave. They pack their bundle and depart, feeling themselves fully compe- tent to cook. The housewife says, "What are we to do ? I 've had six girls within a year ; they are all about alike and leave as soon as they can make bread and cook the breakfast." She seriously considers the prob- THE WAY IN AND OUT. 9 lem of no food and says, "If people could exist without eating, how easy life would be !" Others who do their own cooking cry out from the midst of pastries and cakes, "What shall we have for dinner ? One meal is no sooner done than the next must begin to be ; it is eat, eat, all the time and we are about discouraged.'' And thus we women bemoan the exhausting and monotonous toil; in vain we quote the old adage, " Man's work is from sun to sun, Woman's work is never done," then go right on doing it in the same old treadmill fash- ion. The doctor and the cook have been in close part- nership ever since the ancient priest divided his art of soul and body healing and gave the bodies of the race over to the doctors. It is plain to every one who devotes a moment's thought to this matter that the practice has been, "You feast them and I '11 dose them !" No one will deny the necessity for this, for what else could be done, with all our learning and common sense set aside, except to educate thousands of doctors to counteract the results of the disastrous work of the cooks? Eat and dose has been the universal fashion, and in many in- stances the dose stands on the table to be taken as soon as the meal is done. Oh, woman, do you not with all your energies desire to be released from this destructive partnership? Then open your eyes to the conditions about you ; take up a new line and assist in the emanci- pation of yourself, for you alone are competent to turn the tide toward the culture of health through the Art of Living. From the food productions of the world, vege- table and animal, we obtain our supplies. In variety 10 THE ART or LIVING. there is great abundance and, well selected, cheap enough for the lightest purse. Good sense used in this matter of food alone would banish poverty, and, with good nutrition, intemperance in and out of the home would lose its foothold and each would soon be numbered with the past. It is not the quantity we consume that gives us the best health, but it is what the vital economy is able to appropriate or use in the way of growth and repair from the food consumed. All else becomes waste — dirt to be cast out like ashes from a furnace ; if not, then the accu- mulation of rubbish in the body becomes the primary cause of what we politely name disease. This is no more nor less than dirt swept into and along the streams of life and deposited in bones and tissues. And when the human temples begin to grow stiff and lame and over-fat we are gravely informed that we are getting old — this is old age matter and in the course of nature to be ex- pected ! But these things need not be if we are obedient to the laws of life, and work as industriously for the cul- tivation of health as we have for the cultivation of dis- ease and "old age." We need not try to see how cheaply we can live as to dollars and cents, for that is unwise mental economy, but the thought should be to see how much real nutritive value we can obtain from every dollar spent, by suitable preparation and correct habits of eating. When this side of the question is examined we shall find that as a people we annually spend millions of dollars for those things that cannot in any way contribute to our health, strength, or endurance, or aid us in living beyond a cen- tury as we should. These things enter into the weari- THE WAY IN AND OUT. 11 some and unnecessary cooking and feastings that woman imposes upon herself, for herself and her children, more than for the adult male population. In food supplies we should demand quality rather than size and quantity; then, properly prepared, served, and eaten, one is satisfied with the table. There will be no call for extras or fancy dishes. The business of eating is for building and repairing and the personal temple should receive the best substantial material if we expect it to wear well and withstand the storms of life. Well prepared food requires but little seasoning to render it acceptable to a normal appetite. When we have crept along in our swaddling clothes of dainties and reached that delightful milestone in our progress, we shall hold up our heads, get on our feet, and be able to set aside many of the tempting et ceteras that at present form a part of each meal, to say nothing of the teas, lunches, dinners, banquets, and light refreshments at home and abroad at all times of day and night. Truly we are a "gluttonous race" and are paying dearly for it. The actual expense of these articles in the food eaten — super- fluous but customary — is perhaps one half or more of the entire expense in the culinary department. But that is little compared to the time saved to woman and health gained in the home by at least partial banishment of the present excess. OUR EATING HABITS. '♦ Habit is a cable ; we weave a thread of it each day and it becomes so strong we cannot break it."— Horace Mann. Eating is an art — a fine art if we make it so. It slionld be made a stud}'', for it requires great intelligence to render it a healthful, life-giving process. If one eats merely for the pleasure derived from the sense of taste, then, as the nerves of taste are located in the mouth, de- tain the food there as long as possible, or until the taste is entirely extracted from it. Be sure you need it, then take plenty of time to enjoy every mouthful, making the business of eating as important as any other work. This is the only way, — by perfect mastication which insures complete insalivation, to obtain the full value of nutri- tion from our food. We may eat little and be well nour- ished, eat much and starve. Our food should be free from excessive w^aste. We have been taught that for physiological reasons a large amount of waste necessitat- ing bulk was necessary for correct digestive function, but that theory is not as prominent as formerly. There will be plenty of waste if we do not swallow bran, coarse meat fiber, corn hulls, tough bean skins, potato skins, fruit skins, the woody, stringy cellulose of vegetables, and hard wood}^ seeds of small fruits. There is very little nutriment in the succulent fruits and vegetables, the water or juice they contain being all there is of spe- cial value. That people consume two or three times the amount of food they should is no longer a disputed point. This being the fact it is plain to any observer that the entire OUR EATING HAJJITS. 13 digestive apparatus is daily seriously overtaxed. And not only this but the brain and entire nervous system are heavily involved, and even the soul itself, for we must not forget that it takes soul power to digest food. We must have a clear brain full of hope and cheer if we expect good digestion, or to do our best work in any sort of labor. It is not the necessary work that wearies and wears us out, but the unnecessary work that we igno- rantly impose upon the human temple in which we dwell Penalties will follow disobedience, and the bank of life will burst or break long before its time if the drafts are too heavy. Gluttony is the easily besetting sin of our luxurious civilization. We cannot touch a more tender spot than the eating habits of the race — tender because of its won- derful suggestive and attractive power, and pitiful be- cause of its destructive tendencies. Since Dr. Dewey gave to the world a new physiology, an unusual interest has been manifest toward emancipa- tion out of gluttonous and luxurious living, and into a higher and better life physically, morally, and spirit- ually. His ideas, that were at first doubtfully glanced at by the multitude and classed as the latest "fad," have already won popularity all over the civilized world. The first opposing cry was, "What ! no breakfast ! How are we going to work on an empty stomach ? We should collapse before ten o'clock. JSTonsense ! We can do with- out supper much better." And when the idea of no food in acute diseases and of protracted fasting for the radical cure of chronic ailments, inebriates, and the insane dawned upon the world that was worse yet and the man must be a lunatic to suggest such absurd ideas. But M THE ART OF LIVING. that is not all ; hundreds and thousands are now adopt- ing the one meal a day plan to their decided advantage in every way. "That will do for lazy people and brain workers/' you say. Yes, but brain workers are not lazy by any means, and both body and brain are kept in better condition with less food. Millions of the hardest labor- ers upon the globe eat but once a day and are specimens of health and endurance. We live in stirring times. People move more rapidly, think more quickly, act more speedily in anything that appeals to them, and so the thousands, now going into millions, have investigated and adopted these practical methods that mean so much for the race. And best of all they are found among the most cultured and intelli- gent of the world's workers. And wherever we turn we meet those who have become familiar with the words "no breakfast" and "fasting,'' although the great ma- jority do not yet know what those words so pregnant with enlightened science really mean. However, when we who know proceed to enlighten them by answering their questions their doubts are set aside. N'othing in recent years has made such remarkable progress in so brief a time, and one rarely finds a magazine or paper of note that has not contained something of these new thought ideas in attractive form. In health and physical culture magazines we find more strongly emphasized than ever better nutrition for the world through less eating and gluttony. We find also one meal a day, a fast from one day to three, six, or ten, and from two to four weeks recommended as perfectly wise and safe in many cases of illness. Only those who have had practical experience in these matters have com- OUR EATING HABITS. 15 puted the time and labor saved in cooking and the great reduction in expenses — not only for food, fuel, and as- sistance but in medicines and doctor's visits. And in rest for women none but they can do that branch of the subject justice. What means the non-appearance of breakfast, the most perplexing meal of the day, and most tiresome to cook, and serve in two or three courses? — Fruit, cereals with cream and sugar, coffee, meats and potatoes in varied style, eggs, toast, doughnuts, griddle cakes, bis- cuit, muffins or gems, for this meal must have variety and be hot summer or winter. How much more time there is for rest, recreation, reading, music, which many a busy woman almost for- gets ! What does not a few morning hours of freedom mean to her! No need of hurry and worry with only the dinner to get, which should be good and nutritious, and all have had sufficient exercise to insure a good but not ravenous appetite. The supper as simple as pos- sible unless the dinner must come then and a light lunch towards noon. Look at the saving in work, — only 365 full meals a year instead of 1,095. After becoming fully accus- tomed to this plan you will wonder how you ever dis- posed of three heavy meals a day. The remark is often made that if one only eats two meals or one meal a day they must make up three meals in quantity. But that is not so if they eat properly, which means with normal hunger, and masticate each mouthful as finely as possible. With improved nutrition, health and strength increase; the obese become thin; the thin put on flesh; the wrinkles of age contract on face, neck, and hands, while 16 THE ART OF LIVING. youth again smiles from laughing ej^es that mean young old people, although a silver crown adorns their brow. A man in the fifteenth century said, ^'One meal a day is the life of an angel ; two meals a day is the life of a man ; three meals a day is the life of a beast/' A friend re- cently wrote me, "I have tried the beastly way so long and with such disastrous results, I hope some time to be able to live angelically here on earth; for surely, since two meals do more for me than three, it may be that one will prove better than two.'^ One and two meals a day and fasting are as ancient as time and have always been in practice. But we with our three, five, six meals and between-meal nibbles, are away behind the ancients and have lost the power to dis- cern real appetite, and only by rest from overeating will nature restore to us the exquisite sensation of a normal taste. THE SCIENCE OF LIVING. By Edward Hooker Dewey, M.D.* •• Read, not to contradict and refute, and not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider." — Bacon. The art of living as taught in cookbooks is the art of enticing food without hunger; and this means, for all who indulge from mere taste relish, the culture of dis- ease, a slow dying along the ways of unrecognized suicide. Some simple facts about the brain and its power will make this clearly evident. That it is the source of all the energies of the body as manifest in the power to move, think, love, admire, hate, is not a question. That it never loses weight by sickness nor even when death occurs from starvation, through its power to absorb the body as a store of predigested food; that its tired-out powers are restored by rest and sleep and not by food, hence a self- feeding, self-charging dynamo, is newly dis- covered physiology. It stands in relation to the stomach and other organs as the dynamo to the machine. As a machine the stom- ach is the most severely overtaxed organ of the body and therefore the most wasteful in its demands upon the brain for energy. That food is a source of strength is no more a fact than that the grain in the hopper or the ♦Author of The No-Breakfast Plan and The Fasting Cure, The True Science of Living, A New Era for Women, Chronic Alcoholism. Address, Meadville, Pa. 18 THE ART OF LIVING. stones in the crusher are a source of energy. The diges- tion of a meal, and the forcing of the resulting rubbish through stomach and the many feet of bowels, probably cost more brain power than any labor of mind or muscle — and power that costs serious loss to all other energies, as an overfull meal never fails to demonstrate. If food is capable of restoring the tired-out condition, the dining room and not the bedroom should be the re- sort at bedtime. There is nothing more marvelous in all physiology than the self-feeding power of the brain, its resting power through sleep. There is enough brain food in a body of average weight to require several months to merely starve to death. A soldier of the Civil War entered the service with a weight of 159 pounds. After several months of ulceration of both stomach and bowels, he died with a v/eight of 60 pounds, and yet with a brain so perfectly nourished that the mind remained clear even to the last day of his life. From a history of his case it was believed that there was no food digested during the last four months of life. The writer had a case where the stomach of a child was totally disabled by lye water and without ability to take even a teaspoon- ful of water. Life with clear mind endured until the seventy-fifth day. It is nature's plan that there shall be no eating with- out hunger, a plan to save disease from the destructive complication of indigestion to add to its severity and duration. Every case of acute sickness is a case of star- vation of the body until hunger or death comes, with en- forced food — a physiological crime only less than the bloody lancet of a darker age of medicine. It does not save the body, it cannot save the brain as it need not. THE SCIENCE OF LIVING. 19 In the light of all this physiology, how are we to so live that we may have the clearest vision, the acutest hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, the greatest strength of body, of reason and judgment, or only limited by constitu- tional powers ? The answer to these questions opens up possibilities of the greatest freedom to the slaves of those laboratories called kitchens. On arising in the morning both body and mind are at their normal maximum. With no breakfast to get and eat, no time is lost in kitchen and dining room, hence there is a forenoon of maximum power for business or pleasure, and also a maxim\im of the defensive condi- tion against disease culture. Only without breakfast can there be the highest powers for pleasure and every working energy of head or hands during hours that end even at high noon. Even the child and youth may brave the coldest mornings with more resisting powers if stom- achs are empty, and also get higher marks in every class room. Several questions now naturally arise: 1. When shall we eat? There is only this short answer: Only when hunger comes, whether at noon or in a day, a week, or weeks that end in months. Fasting is nature's only means to in- cite hunger, and no other means is possible. 2. W^hat shall we eat? This is a matter of geographical lines, with fruits at the tropics and blubber at the Frigid zone. In the men- tal zone, where mind is of some account, a mixed diet is indicated and all needed foods easily available. Hunger should make the plainest foods a luxury of relish with- out the aid of sugar or other means to entice eating from -20 THE ART OF LIVING. mere taste relish. All acid fruits decompose the gastric juice and they should never be a part of a general meal. They are practically worthless because nearly void of nourishment. Whether meat shall be used is a question of sentiment, expense, and digestion. The fiber is not digestible and hence it passes through the stomach as rubbish at no little expense of digestion or vital power. Its main virtue is in its savory juices, and when these are extracted by mastication there is no digestive reason why they should not be taken. Bacon is the butter of the common people throughout all the South. It was the butter of the northern soldier, whereby he added diges- tive relish to all of his meals, and thus he was enabled to maintain his body on hard favored rations. At the close of the long fasts of acute sickness, N ature never objects to the odors of the frying pan or the oven ; she never calls for nuts, fruits, nor any of those raw foods whose palatability and digestibility are increased by cooking. 3. How shall we eat ? This is a matter of physical and chemical solution. That digestion is more rapid and at less expense of power when food is reduced to atoms by mastication is not a question for argument. To fill the demands of chem- ical solution can take scarcely less than an hour in mas- tication. That much time spent at a meal, if the social spirit is high, is a resting process to all the wearied en- ergies. 4. How much shall we eat ? The hay of the horse seems to be all rubbish. The flour that his ration of oats contains could easily be taken at one sitting by some strenuous eaters. Is it possible THE SCIENCE OF LIVING. 31 that all his mighty power comes from his food, that seems mere stubble? If all the rubbish and the water could be eliminated from a meal only a few swallows would remain to meet the demands of waste. Since food plays no part whatever as a source of en- ergy, its actual need is merely to restore the wastes of the body, and as this is expensive in its cost of vital power, the important matter is not to exceed the need. This is to be avoided by that thoroughness of mastica- tion that in part will lessen hunger by the time involved in such eating. The mealtime hupger will as totally disappear without as with food. Mr. Horace Fletcher, the author of several popular books, has practiced this method of mastication for several years and the result has been a regaining of perfect health, and on from about a third to a fifth of former average daily food. Food in excess is the developing force in all disease, and excess, from the first swallow from the mother's breast, is the general rule with all who have food in plenty and are able to retain what they eat. Underweight is always 'a matter of disease or famine. Overweight is always a matter of more food than is needed to restore waste. The overweighted are water- logged. In any case this can be reduced by fasting or a cut in the daily food, and this with an increase of strength while the reduction goes on. The increase of weight of the later years of life is always a matter of food out of proportion to physical exercise. 5. What shall we drink? Only water to meet the demands of thirst. Thirst is always due to disease, to overexercise, or to the chemical 22 THE ART OF LIVING. heat of food decomposition in the stomach — or of too much chemistry at one sitting. Thirst is the only indi- cation of the actual need of water in any case, and its causes are always to be avoided. Water in the absence of thirst is a tax upon the kidneys. It has no power to wash out impurities. These are thrown out only by physiolog- ical agencies, — a process that water cannot hasten any more than rapid breathing the purification that occurs in the air cells. It is not in the power of medical concep- tion to point out a need of water not expressed by thirst. Alcoholics corrode and congest the stomach, thus sub- jecting all the juice glands to a strangling pressure ; and they have a benumbing effect upon the brain, whereby voices of distress that ought to be heard that they may be heeded, are silenced. Digestive energy ! From whence does it arise ? From the soul itself. From this center of power go wires to each individual cell of those glands where the chemicals of digestion are evolved. Along these wires go the highest cheer, to incite the greatest digestive ac- tivity, or the agony of despair or the shock of bad news, to paralyze. As the mercury responds to air conditions, so do the digestive powers to soul conditions. The cultivation of cheer, of si wise, sane spirit is a physiological, a moral duty with all. Parents should possess cheer as digestive energy and provide it for their children. It is the motive power of digestion, hence each needs it to prolong and enlarge his own life and to impart it to otliors. What sunshine, warmth, and moisture are to all things that grow in the earth, so is a cheerful soul in a home in its power to impart life to every member. What clouds, fogs, and THE SCIENCE OF LIVING. 33 chilled airs are to both body and soul, so is a face with its clouds and chilly manners. Anger is emotional in- sanity, and explosions of wrath congest the brain, put- ting all of its delicate structures to a weakening strain, and hence lessen all of its functional power. Words of wrath explode like shells in the soul, brain, at which they are aimed, and with physical as well as mental de- struction. It is only through the highest attainable health that there is the greatest strength and coordination of all the powers. With the best of health the moral powers are at their maximum, hence all evil tendencies are at their minimum. The highest human quality is that which recognizes with acute and delicate sense all the rights of others. Such are the very salt of the earth. Moral conditions and moral energy should be a study in all homes as a matter of health energy. It is clearly a matter of increase in its life-saving, life- prolonging power, this studied care to be cheerful, rea- sonable, and thoughtfully just. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. "We know nothing that we have not lived as we ought to know it. What we have lived lias become a part of our being and is of the soul. What we know and have not lived is of the intellect." — Wade. While jet in my teens there came to me a new gospel of life, that led toward the Art of Living for health and longevity. The spirit of reform was a part of my ma- ternal inheritance, and the practical application begun in early life has woven a spiritual web that has become a part of me. To be well and able to reach some of my ideals my energies were devoted. In midwinter, 1857, I became a patient at the Granite State Health Institute kept by Dr. William T. Vail, a graduate of both the Allo- pathic and Homeopathic schools of medicine, but he had not one bottle of medicine or pellets in his new pharma- copoeia. The table was excellent in every way. Two meals a day, fruit, cereals, and various kinds of bread for breakfast, and meat, vegetables, bread, and a plain dessert composed the dinner. Many like myself were restricted to bread and fruit or vegetables. No seasoning was put in the food, but salt, butter, milk, and sugar were always on the table. Apples were the principal fruit in those days, except that in the pastures, and a few hills of strawberries in our garden attracted great attention. Nuts had not been thought of as an article of food. In a few months I became the doctor's office assistant and to him and his charming wife I owe my inspiration to turn my attention PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 25 to medical practice, although intending to fit myself for a teacher; but earing for and teaching the sick has been my work. I was connected with that popular house for seven years, obtaining my practical education and pre- paring for Dr. E. T. Trail's College in New York, from which I graduated in 1861. Eeturning to Dr. Vail's as physician and matron for a time, I was later sent out as a public teacher. My first lecture trip extended over seven months, doing pioneer work mostly in the jSTew England states. I examined and prescribed for the ail- ing, sent many to the Institution and gave from four to six lectures every week, always commencing on Sun- day evening in the most popular church in town. This drew a crowded house, as women lecturers were a curi- osity, and for the first time the people listened to a ser- mon on "Health in its Moral and Eeligious Bearings.'' At succeeding lectures, after speaking for an hour, I was often detained another hour answering questions about the new gospel of life in its varied phases. During my second lecture trip Dr. Trail summoned me to New York to the position of physician in the then famous Institute at 15 Laight street, with which the college was also connected, and the house was for many years the headquarters for reformers of every name. A little later Dr. Trail went West, and the firm changed to Miller, Wood & Holbrook. The house was well man- aged and stood for progression toward health in every- thing promising relief for the sick. I have from the first discarded cumbrous methods of treatment as soon as something better appealed to me. With three other sanitariums I have been associated, one in St. Paul, Minn., my own. There we opened the first baths and 26 THE ART or LIVING. treatment without drugs in that city. We had Electric and Russian baths, Swedish movements, and the Lift- ing-cure. Our methods became popular and our pa- trons were among the best in the city. At this time I was developing a system of what is now known as massage, from the passive exercises of the Swedish movements, and this has been my chief reliance in treat- ing the sick for the last twenty-five years, although it began more than thirty years ago. Physicians were then very aggressive towards it, and did a great amount of talking when their old chronic stand-bys began to get well as soon as taught how to live, and a month or six weeks was in most cases the extent of treatment. There was no difficulty in showing them that our mode of dress, breathing, eating, and drinking had more to do with the contagion of health and disease than all else, and that the matter was entirely in their own hands, and as soon as they could learn the way they would not re- quire massage or any other treatment, except to be humane to themselves. Since leaving sanitarium work my methods have been peculiar to m3^self, and v/ithout exception begun in places where no one had preceded me, although later others have followed working on similar lines. My lec- tures have been mostly in church parlors, one a week, to women on any subject they desired ; and I would remain in a place until my work was done, from two months to a year or more, treating my patients in their homes. In this way my teachings have been adapted to the different families I have met. I have closely observed or tested every phase of tlie dietetic problem, as that has seemed to be the most prominent point in tlie Art of Living. It PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 37 has not been possible nor practical for me to be a vege- tarian during all these years, neither has it been practi- cal for all my patients to adopt my special dietetic ways. Where things cannot be done without great friction, one must do the best one can, and, as thought broadens, no one can fail to see even this question of food in a broader light. Heavy treatment and gross heavy living are subsiding, and it is not necessary to abuse the human temple with excessive work to restore it to health, neither to do penance to keep it in health. We cannot induce the world to adopt certain ideals at once, and even we must do the best we can in whatever environments we may be placed. A few months ago a patient wrote me, "How could YOU advise me to eat meat when I have not been using it for some time? Had you prescribed bread and fruit or nuts, or some infant or invalid food, I should not have been surprised.'*' However, the change of diet from stuffing with "healthy food'' that was not assimilated, proved an immediate change for the better. Not long since in discussing this matter, I remarked that perhaps it was "not so much the meat we ate as some other things.'' "Then you have gone over to the meat eaters." "Yes, in this way; that when I find one who has been dieting for j^ears, or a vegetarian, and failed to get well even in a sanitarium, I have thought it best to make a decided change of food, and have met several such cases starving on what they thought the best of food, and they have begun to recover as soon as the change was made. And this is just as reasonable, scientific, and physio- logical as when one makes a change from meat to no meat and begins to improve, as thousands have done. 28 THE ART OF LIVING. The more closely I study into the disabilities of the semi-invalid world and consider how much has been and still is being done for them, involving not only financial expense, but expense of vitality in taking medicine or in having treatment applied to them by themselves or by some one else, I am led to ask, is all this hard work necessary? Of course there is a class of eases to whom this does not apply. Everything advertised as a "sure cure" for the sick is a reminder that they need that very thing, as their symptoms are exactly like those described in the enticing storied "ad.'' Gymnastics and physical culture are well enough, for one needs a well developed body, but of late there seems to be almost a mania for muscle at the expense of brain. However, after abundant doing in various ways there has now come sleep and rest to the weary body and soul that Nature may have a chance to assert herself until she is able to repair her own machinery. I have never realized this part of the Art of Living as during the past few years, since doing less for the sick and advising more rest for brain and body. As my patients have requested me to devote one chapter in this book for the guidance of half-sick humanity I have scat- tered all through its pages helpful words for all, and they may with safety be applied to them; and here I cannot refrain from quoting a few lines from the pen of an invalid whom I have never met except on paper. '^Xever can I thank you enough for the sweet gospel of rest you prescribed for me ; all the others had given me so much to do, it was a weariness to my poor worn-out body. With nothing to do but rest, the sick look they PERSONAL EXrERIENCE. 29 tell me has gone out of my face. From three meals a day, I now take but a midday meal, and a little fruit for my supper, and my stomach rarely troubles me/' The experience with patients under my personal care for the j^ast three 5^ears has been a revelation to them as well as to myself. x\lways progressing from one thing to another that promised relief for the sick with the least expense and the most rapid results, I adopted the no- breakfast plan for myself. It has been a rule of mine to experiment upon myself first and know what I was talking about when recommending it to others. Those who were in haste to recover, were quite willing to try the new method, and the majority of them said they had no appetite for breakfast but ate because it was before them. In the new method they found themselves able to do the honors of the breakfast table, and by sipping a cup of warm drink the ordeal passed with little comment from the family and much comfort to themselves. They drank water plain, or flavored with fruit juice, hot or cold as thirst demanded, during the forenoon or until hungry, then a substantial meal was eaten, Avithout re- striction except in cereals, milk, and sweets. If feeble they rested, otherwise were better able to attend to their domestic duties than with a breakfast. In less than a week some of them surprised themselves by working all the forenoon, which they had not been able to do for months with such vigor and ease. Eecently I advise more thorough mastication, an hour at dinner if pos- sible and a very light supper if hunger demands it. The dinner is so much more thoroughly assimilated, hunger is a less frequent condition. As to my own ability to work without breakfast, I was never more capable nor 30 THE ART OF LIVING. more successful than during the past three years; noth- ing is more enjoyable than plenty of business and the feeling of weariness is never worthy of notice. But my energies are conserved by rest — perfect rest in bed a half day or more now and then — and forgetting to dine oc- casionally; a good thing if every woman would adopt this method for rest, or an hour or two of rest every day,, and "at home" to no one during those hours. The past year my time has been almost entirely de- voted to literary work, and one meal a day at noon and that less in quantity, is sufficient for my needs, but with more active labor a light supper is taken. The one meal might be better later in the day, but not as convenient. How delightful to hear people say, "You are growing young," instead of "We are all getting old and you with the rest of us, and it 's about time for wrinkles and gra}^ hair." Consult the material calendar less and the spir- itual calendar more. Live less in yesterday's world and more in to-day's world, getting every possible enjoyment out of it. There is youth and beauty for us with silver- ing locks, if we begin even now to cultivate it by the Art of Living for self's sake as well as for others, and it is not too late to do some of the best work of our lives. The corpulent may easily reduce their adipose, reach the model of younger years, increase their length of days, and develop into the mental and spiritual beauty and glory that rightfully belong to the silver- crowned. Let us step out from "growing old grace- fully," and grow young, by being friendly in association with youth, in their work, their education ; keep in touch with cheer and hope and all the "new thought" in the air, never losing hold of any part of progress, neither PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 31 getting set in a mental nor physical quicksand that will surely send us into oblivion. What more gloriously beautiful than love, beauty, and youth clothed in the garments of experience that has led to victorious achievement over conditions that seemed almost insurmountable ! Experience is an expensive teacher, but so valuable we would not set one lesson aside, nor hasten too rapidly over the future ways. Upon all who read this book let me impress the need for rest, and the unnecessary waste of life by excessive work, mental, social, or physical. Say not that you have lived long enough and you are not wanted, that your associates are gone, and that you are like a lone tree in a desert waste. Keep in touch with the world and with your own higher self ; live a grandly beautiful life that is full of possibili- ties for you, — then none can say, "She was such a help- less burden," but, rather, "She was an angel in human guise, so gracious and helpful until the last moment of life." VARIETY IN FOOD. "My appetite is ao poor and nothing tastes good." — The wail of thousands. Writers and teachers on diet and cookery tell ns that man is such a complex animal he needs great variety in his food. But is this really a scientific reason? Is it not rather because he has educated himself so far away from the real man with normal tastes, that he has for- gotten what real hunger is, but is only aware of appetite that constantly demands something new ? Other animals adhere to their own natural food if left to themselves, but when unnaturally fed they deteriorate in health and fail to reach their limit of life. But man, because he can, continually caters to himself in this direction, and the supply of new things often precedes the demand for them. Nothing escapes or is beneath his notice that can possibly be made up into some tasty dish for his eating, and the ultimate benefit derived from these things does not accrue to the consumer but to the caterer, the doctor, and the undertaker. Nature is a perfect chemist. And when we find some ill-tasting or tasteless article and are obliged to dose, season, pickle or in some way doctor it to make it eatable, what is it ? Surely the original would not be recognized by its relatives. From an article be- fore me written by Addison in 1711 I quote the follow- ing : "The apothecary is perpetually employed in counter- mining the cook and the vintner. • It is said of Diogenes that, meeting a young man who was going to a feast, he VARIETY IN FOOD. 33 took him up in the street and carried him home to his friends, as one who was running into imminent danger had not he prevented him. What would that philosopher have said had he been present at the gluttony of a mod- ern meal? Would not he have thought the master of a family mad, and have begged his servants to tie down his hands, had he seen him devour fowl, fish, and flesh, swallow oil and vinegar, wines and spices, throw down salads of twenty different herbs, sauces of a hundred different ingredients, confections and fruits of number- less sweets and flavors? What unnatural motions and counter ferments must such a medley of intemperance produce in the body ! For my part, when I behold a fashionable table set out in all its magnificence I fancy that I see gouts and dropsies, fevers and lethargies, with other innumerable distempers lying in ambuscade among the dishes. Nature delights in the most plain and simple diet. Ever}'^ animal but man keeps to one dish. Man falls upon everything that comes in his way; not the smallest fruit or excrescence of the earth, scarce a berry or a mushroom, can escape him." The trouble is we are creatures of habit, devotees of custom, and seem to have no time for the exercise of reason in this matter, hence eat and take the conse- quences as if gratification of taste was the one thing to be desired. Civilization has brought to us much that it would be wise to civilize into scientific simplicity, until we reach the point where we can partake of any sort of nutritious food prepared in the simplest manner, season it with a grateful heart, and with no other thought than that it is good and just what the system requires. To get. fussy 34 THE ART OF LIVING. and to be all the time thinking about food, and "My ap- petite is so poor/' "I don't relish one thing I do eat," "Everything hurts me," or "I can't eat this or that. What shall I do ? I must eat something," is the bane of many a life and the despair of wife, mother, or cook, who in vain do their best to prepare something to meet the demand. When one gets to the point of "no appe- tite" wait as other animals do until hungry, then what hunger calls for will be relished and do its work prop- erly. When there is no hunger, don't work against na- ture "to get up an appetite" or try to coax it to appear by fixing up nice( ?) dainty dishes, and then taxing your weary brain and hands in dressing the invalid's tray with ribbons and bows and other elegancies to adorn those eatables that are entirely uncalled for and can be only an injury to one devoid of hunger. But this is custom and unwisdom, and may we not hope that the light of wisdom will reverse custom in these directions? We may live on a few things even continuously if we desire and there are those who live on nuts and fruits exclusively. The scientists have recently for the first time investigated the dietary habits of these people in California. They had been fruitarians from five to seven years. They ate twice a day, the first meal con- sisting of nuts and fruits of various kinds ; for the second they usually ate no nuts but substituted olive oil and honey, the product of flowers and fruit. They do not mix their foods, neither dilute their nuts and evaporated fruits. The fresh fruits, which were used in abundance, were the largest item of expense. The average daily cost throughout the year is about twenty-five cents each. There is no cooking and but little refuse. The scientific VARIETY IN FOOD. 35 report, however, is that "The diet is deficient in protein and fuel value and yet the children seemed healthy and active, although under normal size. Comparing the re- sults with commonly accepted standards, all the subjects were decidedly under nourished." Although living upon this Edenic food in its natural state is rather expensive in some ways, and the kitchen problem easily solved, yet we cannot think this method would result in the highest development of the race. We have yet to learn whether superior brain or any other superior power would be de- veloped in man upon fruits and nuts alone. The next step in simplicity is in bread and fruit, to which nuts may be added if desired. This method has been adopted by large numbers and seems to fulfill every requirement in the human economy. One of the most able and scientific works upon this subject is "Fruit and Bread," by Gustav Schlickeysen, translated by M. L. Holbrook, M. D. This book will be of great interest to those investigating along these lines. In it we find cook- ing reduced to bread making of the plainest kind and fruits used in their ripe, uncooked state, devoid of mix- tures. Bread, meat, and potatoes are staple articles of food and would sustain anyone, no matter what his work might be, in health and ability in all directions. When we add to these other vegetables that we desire we have simplicity in a mixed diet that is ample to satisfy every need of the human temple. If we steam cook our food, the labor of cooking is much reduced, and becomes pleas- ure instead of wearisome toil, and food so cooked does- not require manipulation in any other way to make it acceptable. If fruits are added they, in their complete 36 THE AKT OF LIVING. perfection, require no further preparation. Why, then, do we need such a multitude of made dishes that involve more time and expense than all else? Why not make an effort to educate ourselves away from them and so lighten the burdens we have imposed unwittingly upon ourselves? Should we discard all animal foods, there need be no other changes made to give us the perfection of health, strength, and ability in any labor, mental or physical. Nuts may be used if desired, but wheat, oats, and corn will furnish every element lacking in the disuse of meat. There is abundant variety in all necessary foods, and it is a mistaken idea that there is hard work and ex- pense involved in a change of diet from complexity to simplicity, from health-destroying to health-inducing foods. Take the ordinary table, leave the substantials, and cast out the sharp sauces and pickles. If an excess of seasoning is used reduce it from day to day. Tea and coffee are properly medicines and not necessary. Cut down the rich desserts, using less eggs, sugar, and spices in them, and taste will change so that good bread and fruit will be quite as acceptable as the enticing sweets. Expensive substitutes are not necessary; there is abun- dant variety in all nature's products, and nutritious food, whatever it may be, in its preparation and the time and manner of taking it is involved the entire subject of dietetic nutrition, that means perfect health. WHO ARE VEGETARIANS, AND WHAT IS A HYGIENIC DIET? " True taste is a great economist. She confines her choice to a few objects and delights in producing great effects by small means; while false taste is forever sighing after the new and rare." There are so many phases to this question, and so many thousands claiming to be vegetarians by forsaking the "fleshpots/' that the question arises, What is a vege- tarian? The ready reply is, "One who eats no meat." If by meat is meant flesh foods merely, then it were more consistent to call such people "non-flesh eaters" instead of vegetarians, as the name is very misleading. There are four classes of earth productions, — grains, vegetables, fruits, and nuts. There are two classes of people, the meat eaters and the non-meat eaters. Of this latter class there are several divisions. Those who live on nuts and fruits are called fruitarians. Large numbers live on bread and fruit, many of them includ- ing nuts; to these, others add vegetables, cereals, and vegetable oils, and these constitute the true vegetarians, living entirely upon the vegetable productions of the earth. There are many thousands who abstain from meat and use freely all animal products; others use made dishes containing animal products ; and a large class who eat no meat use animal products very freely, and fish is also included in their bill of fare, — and all class themselves as vegetarians. Of late there has been much discussion on the subject of fish-eating vegetarians. A few years ago 38 THE ART OF LIVING. the author met a woman who said she was a vegetarian, and added that she "had fish for dinner." "A vegeta- rian and eat fish." "Yes, I eat plenty of it. Fish is not meat !" I began to investigate and found others who had no scruples about eating fish. "But why do you eat fish? Tliey have to be killed." "Because they are different, and it does not seem so bad to kill the cold- blooded fish as the warm-blooded animals, which seem so nearly related to us." "This may be true, but I fail to see this fine distinction and cannot understand such altruism. Is it science or sentiment that controls this matter of slaying for food ?" "Both doubtless have their share in this vexed question, but there is a difference, and, when we come down to the right and Justice of the matter, is eating fish any worse than using animal prod- ucts? And you know nearly all the vegetarians use those; indeed, feel that they could not get along well without them." "Then let us announce ourselves just what we are — non-flesh eaters. We boast that no animal need be slain that we may be fed, that seeming to be the main point. But thousands of young are robbed of their natural food and slain that we may have milk. We do not kill the hen that we may have eggs, yet we rob her nest and eat the undeveloped chickens. The one, as you see, a ^milk machine,' the other an 'egg producing ma- chine,' so it is no great sacrifice to give up flesh eating when we partake abundantly of these concentrated nutri- ents, fish included." "I believe you are right, but I never had the subject presented to me in this way, and am sure I could not be a strict vegetarian." The Japanese are often quoted as a hardy, long-lived race of vegetarians, but they consume large quantities WHO ARE VEGETARIANS ? 39 of fish, also meat to some extent, if they can afford it. But the cow and the ox, the helpers in their labor, they regard with affection, and would not eat of their flesh. The Chinese are called a nation of rice-eaters; fish and meat are used by them as freely as by the Americans, and pork is their staple animal food. Their strength and endurance is proverbial. The strict vegetarian excludes from his diet every creature having sentient life and ever}^ animal product, and no others are really entitled to the name. The aspect of vegetarianism, then, becomes changed, and a more serious matter than merely abstinence from meat, and few comparatively adopt this practice ; neither, as a rule, would it be wise to do so except by slow degrees. There are many fine points involved in dietetics as taught to- day ; all have their merits and their adherents, and doubt- less if any one of us were confronted with the problem of life or death due to a lack of our accustomed food, we would hardly deem it wise to perish by starvation rather than partake of other food within our reach. Experience is teaching us that an excess of meat is not essential to health and strength. More than half the world live without it ; some because their religion for- bids animal slaughter, others because they cannot afford it even as a luxury more than once a year. They endure the most severe physical labor, and many live beyond a century, but they live very plainly because they must, and many of them live almost entirely on bread. The ancient sages and philosophers, so often quoted as non-flesh eaters living beyond a century, were also abstemious in their dietetic habits. An eminent writer more than a century ago said of them, "If we consider 40 THE ART OF LIVING. these ancient sages, a great part oS.^ wh.ose philosophy consisted in a temperate and abstemious' course o"f life, one would think the life of a philosopher and the life of a man were of two different dates." We know that a large proportion of those who live on a mixed diet, in- cluding more or less animal food, perform the most severe mental and physical labor and hundreds of them also live beyond a century, and that their achievements have been valuable to the world none can dispute. It is also a notable fact that those who reach great heights live temperate lives, and a plain diet is the foundation stone, not merely that which is known as "healthy food." Food of any kind is not good for a person unless the system makes good use of it. And here is where so many people become stranded on dietetic rocks, because they do not know how, when, or what to eat. We find to-day on the tables discarding meat, substitutes fully equal in the concentration of mysterious compounds to those found in conventional cookbooks. There are turkeys, ducks, roasts, chops, steaks, cutlets, and other dishes bearing the name of meats, and edibles with foreign names that quite bewilder a plain American, and all composed of various spiced and prepared articles, that cannot serve the normal use in the human economy. The thing to guard against in good cookery is combinations and con- centrations of mixtures that some dietists deem indispen- sable or think must be provided to avert the supposed odium attaching to hygienic or vegetarian living and to increase their numbers by enticing culinary products. So far as health is concerned the real article of meat, prop- erly cooked, would be preferable to many of these substi- tutes, and many others view this branch of the subject WHO ARE VEGETARIANS? 41 in the same light. Many who discard meat, eat of other foods, including milk, cheese, beans, peas, nuts, and eggs to excess, and in this way they prove more detrimental than a moderate use of meat. Nutritious articles of food, well cooked, but few at a meal and those well selected, constitute a hygienic die- tary. We should select the best, not necessarily the most expensive, foods and use them prudently. From all the wisdom that is placed before us we can only glean the truth from experience. One cannot make a code of dietetic rules that will be adapted to every one, and when we reach a certain point and say this is the end, we place a barrier to progress in that line. The way is open to all, and those who desire to make the most of life in every direction will observe the sim- plicity in Nature and take their lesson from her. She will continue to yield her bounty in every clime so long as the necessities of life demand it. We should be sure that science is the foundation of our theories, and never ignore the evidence of experience and common sense no matter how seriously it may conflict with our preconceived ideas and habits. Horace Mann has written, "Do not think of knocking out another man's brains because he differs from you. It would be as ra- tional to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago." Truth is the one mighty force to which we must yield. She alone commands first our attention, then our accept- ance. It is the one thing in the line of progress that humanity is seeking, and we cannot afford to evade or set it aside. Even with the burden of ancestral habits, customs, and crudities, through a multitude of experi- 42 THE ART OF LIVING. inents, opinions, and theories, we have developed to greater refinements, destructive in many ways though they be. But possibly ere the present century closes we may be living in the golden age, when " Heaven's attribute was universal care, And man's prerogative to rule but spare." This seems the ideal code of dietetics in its highest al- truism, reached as yet by a minority of the race. SUN-COOKED OR RAW FOOD. It is an old Spanish proverb that «' The Lord has sent into this world a great variety and abundance of delicious food to gratify the palate and to minister to the wants of all mankind, while the devil, ever intent upon mischief, has sent along a lot of ignorant, miserable cooks to spoil it all." Upon the cook devolves the responsibility of feeding the world — the earth cook, the sun cook, and the kitchen cook. The earth cook is not qnite as satisfactory as the sun cook. There are those who tell us we should eat our food as it grows, after the fashion of other animals, with- out manipulation by the kitchen cooks. The superiority of an exclusive raw food diet is as yet a matter of experi- ment, although the claims made by its advocates are very great. We can afford to wait for results while the ques- tion to cook or not to cook nature's products is on trial ; at the same time, every one who gives a moment's thought to the subject will admit that our cooking cus- toms are excessive. But the raw diet or sun-cooked food is nothing new, and the seemingly new things coming up or into view, almost bewildering in their rapidity, are really about as ancient as Father Time and his scythe "that cuts down all, both great and small." We cannot even find a new hygienic law— they were "in the beginning" and in op- eration as long ago as we have any record. The priest in his robes was also the physician and prescribed some- thing to do instead of something to take. To do was to obey the laws of the body ; live temperately in every way, keep the temple clean with pure food, air, and water. 44 THE ART OF LIVING. After a time the people, because of disobedience, were too severe a tax upon the priest, and it became necessar}^ for him to delegate the office of physical healer to others. The cook also appeared at a remote date with methods of rendering raw food more palatable, and from then until now we have been led on with the growth of ages so firmly fixed that when a few do step out a great cry is raised against their one-sided notions. But we must wait for developments, and there never yet has been a step taken in any seemingly new direction, no matter how absurd or impossible it may have appeared to the majority, that has not had a mission for good. Primi- tive man ate sun-cooked food, either as it grew or dried it in the sun-heated oven. When fire was utilized for broiling and roasting, his primitive oven was a bed of hot ashes. Through the ages invention has progressed^ and now electricity has been impressed into our service, and with the neat electrical range one has only to turn a switch or press a button, — the fire is ready and the maid or wife may cook and serve a dinner without dis- comfort or weariness. Having reached the climax of ease in the preparation of food we are now confronted with the sun-cooked food problem, which, if adopted, may endow us with unlimited vitality that will resist the ac- tion and friction of time itself ! Something has caused the decrease in human life, for there was a time when men lived upon a cooked mixed diet, not only one century but more than one. We cook our food to render it more palatable and more digestible. We know that cooking destroys the living germ, and that food cooked or ripened in the sun is filled with electrical vitality; that it is full of rich juices of various flavors SUN-OOOKED OR RAW FOOD. 45 and quality. Upon investigation of this question we find that the main argument in favor of a raw food or sun-cooked diet is that, as cooking destroys the life prin- ciple, it is impossible to make as pure and enduring tissue from cooked as from uncooked food, which its advocates call dead or devitalized food; hence, there should be no chemical change in food through the addition of artifi- cial heat by cooking. They also claim that raw food is more easily assimilated, more nourishing, and possesses better staying qualities than cooked food. Other argu- ments are used, but some of them are too vague and crippled to merit a moment's consideration. We already cat much raw food. Fruits, nuts, cabbage, celery, on- ions, cucumbers, radishes, cress, parsley, lettuce, and even many flowers are eaten ; but Nature must have made a mistake, for she has not compounded even these eat- ables Just right, and "man has sought out many inven- tions'' of a pungent, spicy nature to render them eat- able. Eaw peas and turnips, grains in the milk and sweet corn uncooked are all palatable. There seems suf- ficient in this list to insure the proper supply of salts and acids for the construction of healthy tissue. One need not be limited, as there is ample supply of sweet, tooth- some vegetables and they can be ground if necessary. After all, the raw food diet is not so formidable as it appears, and with the making of bread, if one could not relish grain without cooking, there would be nothing in the way of this diet if one chose to adopt it. But we must not forget that a great amount of waste that is of no use in the system is very far in excess of the little that can be assimilated even in the raw food diet. We would naturallv infer that a diet of raw food 46 THE ART OF LIVING. meant an Edenic diet, and all one had to do would be to pluck and eat of any desirable edible without manipu- lation to render it palatable, and we saw at once the world approaching the ideal home without a kitchen o-.^ a cook ! But alas for the emancipation of woman even with this diet ! Milk, cream, butter, cheese, and eggs, all un- cooked, are freely used by many, and the methods of hashing, compounding, and seasoning nature's delicious sun-cooked foods into enticing dishes, appear to a hygien- ist a grave error. However, with some the diet is lim- ited to a few articles taken in the natural state, and grains are used in the milk instead of ripe, when they are then prepared in various ways into bread with or without the admixture of fruits and nuts. Green leaves and salads are largely used, onions, radishes, and cucum- bers, and some use beans, potatoes, carrots, etc., accord- ing to individual selection, as no one is restricted. This branch of dietetics merits attention; but so long as it is necessary to mix and hash and season their va- rious compounds to induce an appetite for them, and also take the cow and the hen along with them to perfect their products, and make them into rich, concentrated combinations, we fail to comprehend the superiority of the raw food system over a plain hygienic diet of cooked foods, either with or without meat. In all sincerity we ask the reader of these pages if it is, as the raw food eaters claim, the "cooked, devitalized food" mankind has lived upon that has caused such deterioration of the race, that has made of them invalids, gluttons, inebriates, and criminals. Is it not rather the excess of food de- prived of its best qualities by bad cooking, the unright- SUN-COOKED OR RAW FOOD. 47 eous combinations and health-destroying abominations of all kinds in and out of home, that the race has used in unlimited quantity at all times of day and night? There can be but one sensible reply to this question, namely, we have made unnatural use of nature's natural productions. Self-preservation is the law; self-destruc- tion has been the practice! When we eliminate the health-destroying articles we now use upon our tables, and cease to cater to artificial taste, we shall be upon the right track and discover ele- ments in our cooked and uncooked food that have been completely overshadowed by unwise preparation. We are surely tending that way — the way to health, youth, and life, such as we have not yet experienced, but which when reached will endow us with vital powers sufficient to carry even many in these generations a long way into their second century. We are infants yet, clothed in dietetic errors that develop lives of bodily discomforts, to say nothing of dwarfed mental, moral, and spiritual life sadly crushed and deficient in its higher mani- festations of spirituality and perfect development in every direction. By the practical renewal of our minds toward the body, regarding it as a temple "sacred and holy," — ours to use and not abuse, — we can make it a harmonious home for the vibrations of melodious music that will fill out the measure of our days with inspirational light, love, and wisdom. ATMOSPHERIC FOOD. "Eat Some Air.'"— Eleanor Kirk. The above phrase floating into space from an inspi- rational brain that supplies a powerful pen, is doing a much-needed work. But air food is no new thing. We were born right into it. The very first thing every new baby does is to eat a good ration of air ! The whole race has been eating it ever since its first meal, and this electrical, invisible food is so essential we cannot live five minutes without it. Why, it 's alive, the most very- much-alive thing we do eat. "What do you mean?" "Just what I say. It 's alive with life, and we can live on it days, weeks, and months if need be, but if it 's vitiated it 's no longer alive, but poison, and brings death instead of life.'" "But how can one live on it ? It can't be chewed and swallowed like other food.'" "Well, it 's not necessary to send everything into the stomach that we thrive upon, and people are beginning to find out a good many things for their benefit that are as ancient as time itself — plain, simple things that were ^in the be- ginning,' and they are '^just as free as air' to everybody who will." But there are hosts of people who will not have it. They prefer to feed on the poison air of their own bodies, in closed sleeping rooms and stuffy living rooms, and all other kinds of negative air. It seems strange that our scientists have not made a more thorough study of atmospheric dietetics. When we stop to consider the matter we find there is much in it besides ATMOSPHERIC FOOD. 49 plain air, and that the elements composing it change with our environments. Air is the most thoroughly alive thing we consume except water. With every breath we inhale we take in millions of microbe life, perfectly harmless if taken into a healthy body, otherwise we "catch" all sorts of diseases by eating air. Then, again, air is laden with odors from everything and everybody, and this means much to us all. Many are refreshed by the odors of food, and cooks are often small eaters, the reason given being that they handle so much food, yet they are as well as those who eat three times as much. Go out on a fine summer day, arouse the soul sense into activity, and appropriate that which you never see with material sense, — the odors from earth, grass, and clover at your feet, and the fresh upturned soil exhales an unseen substance for you. The beds of bloom close at hand, the graceful vibrations of every leaf and twig, mean life for you. Walk into the forest and every step you take upon that marvelous living carpet of nature's own weaving brings to you something, ethereal though it be. The pine, the spruce, chestnut, balsam, maple and oak, are every moment vibrating their delicate substance to you and there is life in abundance in such aroma. Eat all you can for one day, now and then, for this feast is nature's own and worth testing. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." The proof of the air is in the breathing. Yes, "eat some air," quan- tities of the best you can get. Don't be stingy with it. It is costless, yet priceless; laden with daintiest substance ^'ready for immediate absorption" — odors, flavors, and essences from earth, grasses, flowers, fruits, and trees. 50 THE ART OF LIVING. each and all radiant with life, yielding with every breath that which helps to sustain your life. The world is full of health seekers, being sent by the doctors to high and low altitudes, to the lakes, forests, and changes of clime and scene north, east, south, and west and across the seas, ever restlessly vibrating to this, that, and the other, never dreaming that health lies within and the without to develop it is near at hand if only they were wise enough to utilize it, and change their minds from the contagion of unhealth to the contagion of health. Oh, how stupid "we mortals be," and how reckless of time, comfort, and money to find "lost health" ! Stop and think about it and "eat some air," good air, and take a rest from the continual exhausting search after that which lies at your own door. Wherever one may be, air food is free. From palatial surround- ings with not a penny in your pocket you may "eat some air" and be thankful that you know how to appropriate that which others provide. Go into any place of business activity, no matter how depressed you may be, and the air so full of business life uplifts you, and you go out full of hope and strength. At the church, concert, convention, theater, lecture, — a different air is found in each place, and we each and all find ourselves vibrating toward the quality of air food that hunger demands. In the hospital, the asylum, the prison, is found air food laden with misery, wretchedness, and agony. Where there is mirth, health, happiness, the very walls exhale joy and life. In such a home when the door opens the air is fragrant with welcome, although you may be a stranger. You step within and even the chairs invite ATMOSPHERIC FOOD. 51 you to rest and "eat some air/" and such air, with only a crust, is far more delicious food than that found at the most sumptuous table set in a frigid air of conven- tionality. Even the people we daily meet upon the street or asso- ciate with in or out of home exhale an air of hurry or worry, of business or pleasure, of envy, hate, jealousy or love, of health or illness; and so each and all radiate from themselves the air that shall help or hinder the work of the world. There are people who almost con- sume others, body and soul. The solution is found in the air they emanate, tasteless, odorless, maybe, but food, whether good or not, and there is a great difference in people. This may be easily proven by noting the after effects of a call from our friends. The one leaves us full of life and joy, the other weak, depressed, and wretched. No one better understands this than the physician who wisely selects a nurse for his patients. As for himself he is so permeated with good air from hat to boots that his patients thrive upon it hours after his departure. In the home, the schoolroom, any and every- where, too much good, alive air cannot be consumed. But this is not all. Air is alive with invisible substance that sustains the life of some plants, and even the trees and plants standing in the earth derive little nutriment from the soil, but far more from the air and sun. The air is filled with nitrogen, one of the most important elements in food; the scientists tell us we should starve without it, and are now considering the problem of manufacturing nitrogenous products of food directly from the air. The air magnetized and electrified by the sun's rays, — who can tell how much of life-giving, life- 52 THE ART OF LIVING. sustaining force there is in or may yet be imparted directly from the sun to the air which we eat? Then eat and enjoy the air upon which the sun shines, and you will find the lungs growing larger and stronger, the blood purer and richer, and the Art of Living much easier to learn and practice. Eecent developments are teaching those who are ready to learn that it is possible to live well, live better in every way, on less than one third the food we have been accus- tomed to consume. Very little nutriment is required to keep the body in repair, yet what an amount of trash we impose upon the human temple every day, and how little the benefit derived from it ! — taking it in because it tastes good only to cast it out as rubbish too burdensome to be used in the human laboratory. We are passing through a rapid process of evolution, and science will, within a few years, develop more mar- velous results in human and domestic economy than now seem possible. We are traveling toward mental and spiritual supremacy that is leading us into wonderful light and life. "I have meat to eat that ye know not of,'* is being practically illustrated, and the marvel is why we have been so long in getting to the understanding of it. But out of material grossness many of us have thus far come, and our steps are lighter and freer than ever before. We arc becoming more individualized, hence more of a law unto ourselves, obedient to the unwritten law of the "I" within the human temple. When we have learned that nature's food products are chemically correct, and that if properly cooked they may be relished when seasoned with hunger alone, a long ATMOSPHERIC FOOD. 53 step in the right direction has been taken. When we live without the animal and his products, without taking the life of any sentient creature, a still longer step has been taken. When we find that a few of nature's nutritious prod- ucts will sustain us in health and strength, the kitchen problem will be revolutionized. When this point has been reached we shall have learned that we subsist on much invisible substance, that is being consumed every moment, and that air is the most highly organized and most valuable of all foods. Indeed it is not unreason- able to suppose that as we gradually educate ourselves away from grossness in living, and thus approach more spiritual conditions, we shall be able to obtain our food from the great laboratory of nature with less and less care of thinking what we shall have to eat and how we shall prepare it. "A Utopian dream and quite impossible," you say. Wait for the developments of time, and the purification of human desires that are now passing through the re- finer's crucible of fire. Meanwhile let the banner bear- ing the golden words, "Eat Some Air," float over every home; echo and re-echo adown the centuries until we- have learned its full value as an element in feeding and preserving us in the most perfect health, and so redeem the race from the exacting servitude of excessive and useless cooking and eating. THE STAFF OF LIFE. Thirty years or more ago white flour was nearly all starch; the bran and shorts containing the gluten was fed to the pigs and cattle. Most of the bread in those days was of inferior quality, raised with very poor yeast, milk, or "salt risings," and dough raised until far on the road to decay. There is now no reason why we should not be the best of bread makers, yet with all the improved material the proportion of a poor, negative quality of bread is very large. Improved milling meth- ods have given us a superior white flour, and the highest grade of patent roller process flour contains a large amount of the middlings or gluten, which element gives to the wheat gram its superiority over all other grains for bread making. The lower and cheaper grades of flour contain very little gluten and do not go as far in feeding a family as the better grades. Those who de- pend upon the baker are no better ofl^, and the laboring man defrauds himself by thinking what big, puffy loaves he gets for ten cents. And he wants them fresh every day right from the oven, too, for his family "cannot eat bread a day old." The intemperance caused by the use of impoverished, badly-cooked, low-grade bread is beyond estimate, and the pity of it is, men don't know why they hang around the saloon, and women don't know why they "brace up" on tea, coffee, and wine. But when perfect nutrition is supplied to the human temple, the brain will not de- THE STAFF OF LIFE. 55 mand anything further to sustain health, comfort, and strength. The best of white flour is known by its creamy tint. To test its quality mix a little of it with cold water to a stiff dough, then stretch and pull it out; if it is elastic, tough, and leathery it contains a good proportion of gluten, is nutritious, and will make excel- lent bread. If it is not elastic and breaks apart easily it is deficient in gluten, and made into bread it becomes a very weak "staff of life." It will do for cake and pastry, but is nearly all starch and deprived of its best elements. We should prefer our own homemade bread, and all that is necessary to have it is the best of flour, com- pressed yeast, water or milk and salt. These materials will produce sweet, nutty-flavored bread if well made and baked. Poor material will give us diseased bread, rough, coarse, vile-smelling, sour loaves so disappoint- ing to the maker and the consumer. Bread is much sweeter and keeps moist longer when mixed with water than when mixed with milk, or milk and water, and good bread is good until it is gone even if a week or ten days old. Bread is not improved by the addition of sugar or shortening, but if one prefers to use it a level teaspoon- ful of each to a loaf is sufficient. The cook room should be well ventilated, the utensils clean, water freshly drawn and heated, and in cold weather warm the pans, bowl, molding board, and flour. French bread is mixed with water ; Vienna bread with equal parts of milk and water, and the Vienna bread makers are said to be the best in the world. The crust of bread is the sweetest and most easily digested part of the loaf, hence loaves should be of medium size. Do $6 THE ART OF LIVING. not attenn3t to sweeten sour, acrid bread dough with, soda. Such dough has advanced too far in the putrefac- tive stage and is only fit for the garbage pail. Yet there are plenty of cooks who do not know when the dough has reached that stage, and always put a little soda in the flour when mixing, fearing it may sour. But those who through carelessness let the dough spoil, then doctor it with soda, which reveals itself in spots and streaks, raise and half bake it in biscuits for breakfast, could not give their families a more indigestible mass. There is no luck about bread making or anything else ; failure denotes a lack of something. In yeast bread making, the peculiar principle called diastase changes the starch to sugar ; the yeasl plant in its growth changes sugar to carbonic acid gas and alcohol, both, being vola- tile, escape in the baking. The gas by its expansion causes the dough to rise. By kneading, it is evenly dis- tributed through the dough, so that when driven off in the baking, the loaf is fine grained. If the oven is not hot enough the loaf will spoil in the oven. It should be so hot that the yeast plant may be killed at once; then it will be well baked and the crust dextrinized, thus ren- dering it the sweetest and most digestible part of the loaf. The modern bread maker makes her bread in the morning and has it ready for the oven in three and a half hours. A still shorter process is by using double the quantity of yeast and a higher temperature of the mixing liquid and the raising process, and in three hours or less bread, biscuit, or rolls may be made and baked. This is a great improvement over the old method qf raising over night, and having the dough ten or fifteen hours in preparation for baking. TPIE STAFF OF LIFE. 57 To Dr. Sylvester Graham the world is indebted for the promulgation of the fact that we were starving on bread made of white flour. The original Graham meal was made of good wheat including the entire hull, as even the woody fiber was considered by him an essential element in the promotion of health. Dr. Graham him- self would not approve of the spurious article that to- day bears his name. This is extensively manufactured of an inferior quality of white flour mixed with coarse bran, refuse, and dirt. The doctor prescribes "Graham bread"; the patient buys the coarse, scratchy flour, sifts and disguises it with molasses, salt, butter, and yeast, slack bakes and eats it fresh, then wonders why he still has dyspepsia ! But it is possible to obtain a first-class Graham flour, both fine and coarse, that will without sifting make ex- cellent bread. This flour is made of the best wheat, which is deprived of its outer coat and all the grit it contains, and like the best entire wheat flour it may be known by the uniform size and perfect mixture of the bran. FLOUR OF THE ENTIRE WHEAT. The Franklin Mills Co., Lockport, N". Y., are the original manufacturers of "Flour of the Entire Wheat." This brand is always reliable, and bread made from it by a good cook is par excellence the bread for the founda- tion of a healthy race. The world is full of men and women who lack backbone to carry them properly through it, and sufficient healthy nerve to enable them to resist the temptations that surround them. The bread they have eaten has been deficient in the elements neces- 58 THE ART OF LIVING. sary for good bone and nerve, and this alone is respon- sible for thousands of human wrecks. The flour of the entire wheat is as fine as white flour, and contains all there is in wheat except the outer woody fiber, which is unfit for the human stomach. The best grades of it may be known by the perfect mixture and shade of the flour. Part II. HEALTH CULTURE COOKING. ( It requires a good brain to cook and serve I even simple articles in the best manner. No matter how carefully a recipe may have \ been put on paper a cook should use her own ] judgment and remember that all spoons and j cups are not alike, neither is all raising material of uniform quality. BREAD MAKING. White Bread. To each pint of lukewarm water or equal parts of milk and water, add one half teaspoon salt and one half compressed yeast cake that has been dissolved in a little tepid water. Stir in sifted flour with a strong spoon until stiff enough to turn from the bowl to the molding board. Knead well, adding a little flour until it ceases to stick to hands or board. Return it to the bowl, cover with a thick, clean towel, set in a warm place and protect from a draft. In two and a half or three hours, maybe less, it will have doubled in size ; then stir it down and form with deft handling into small loaves and put into warm, oiled, brick-shaped pans; set in a warm place and in an hour or less they will be light enough to bake. The oven should be hot enough to brown a spoonful of flour in two minutes, and should be kept at about that temperature until the bread is nearly done. If inclined to burn on the top, cover with clean brown or asbestos paper. Bake from forty-five minutes to one hour, turning on the sides if necessary. A loaf, when properly baked, is a deep, rich brown all over, and when cut no odor of fermentation, no soft center indicating uncooked germs that will destroy the loaf in two or three days, are visible to taste or smell. When done, remove from the pans and stand uncovered 62 THE ART OF LIVING. in a cool, airy place, and as soon as cold put in box or jar, without wrapping, and keep in cool dry place, where nothing can give it an unpleasant taste. EOLLS. Take a piece of the bread dough after the first rising, cut it in pieces and form with the hands into rolls an inch in diameter and five or six inches long. Lay these in a broad pan with space between, and when light bake until well done. These rolls may be made into a twist b\' laying one over the other and pinching at the ends. Entire Wheat Bread. See above directions for making yeast bread and rolls of white flour. The only difference in raising the en- tire wheat is that the dough must not be as stiff as for v^hite bread. Do not add even one spoonful of white flour to entire wheat if you expect the best of bread, and a good bread maker cannot fail to have light, sweet, nutty loaves of entire wheat. Graham Bread. This should be made like other yeast bread, but, as the flour is coarser, do not make it as stiff. If well stirred it does not require kneading, and many people put it in the bread pans when first made and bake it as soon as light. Do not let it rise too long, and bake an hour or more. Never use molasses in bread, and but little if any sugar. Buns and Biscuit. Take a portion of the bread dough, add sugar and shortening to your taste, and a few English currants if BREAD MAKING. 63 you wish. Knead, roll half an inch thick, cut small, put in pan, and soon as light bake in a quick oven to a rich brown. Yeast bread and biscuit should not be eaten until a few hours old. Bread Eaised with Baking Powder. Use only reliable brands of baking powder. Entire wheat, graham or rye flour may be used in place of white flour in bread, biscuit, gems, or any food raised with baking powder, the only change being a little more or less of the mixing liquid. One can use eggs and sugar in this kind of bread cooking if they wish, but they are not necessary, and when mixed with cold water with a little more shortening they are more digestible than when mixed with milk. Bread should be bread — a real substantial — and not a "melt in the mouth" dainty. Baking Powder Biscuit. Four level cups sifted flour, four level teaspoons bak- ing powder, pinch of salt, three tablespoons liquid short- ening (less with milk), about two cups of cold water or sweet milk. Mix all the dry ingredients, add the liquid and shortening and stir to a smooth dough. Turn upon the floured molding board, dust with flour and roll an inch thick. Cut with floured cutter; put in shallow tin, prick with a fork and bake well in a hot oven. Baking Powder Shortcake. Mix and make like biscuit; roll half an inch thick and bake on shallow tins. Soft Biscuit. Make as above and drop from spoon on oiled tin and bake. This method is less work and biscuit just as nice. 64 the art of living. Baking Powder Gems and Muffins. Four level cups of sifted flour, four level teaspoons baking powder, one level teaspoon salt, two tablespoons liquid shortening, and two cups cold water or sweet milk. Mix well the dry ingredients, add the liquid, then the shortening, and stir to a smooth dough. It must not be too stiff. Drop from spoon into warm oiled gem pans and bake in a hot oven. For muffins add two tablespoons white sugar. Baking Povtder Dumplings. Three level cups sifted flour, three level teaspoons baking powder, one half teaspoon salt. Mix all well together, then add sufficient cold water or sweet milk to make a soft biscuit dough. Drop from spoon closely together on an oiled plate and set at once in steam cooker. Keep the water constantly boiling and steam an hour at least. All steamed flour food requires long cooking. These may be used with a stew of any kind and are sufficient for a large family dinner. Add liquid shortening if to be served with fresh or cooked fruit. White Corn Cake. Two level cups of fine bolted white corn meal, one ieup of white flour, one tablespoon white sugar, three level teaspoons baking powder, one half teaspoon salt, two tablespoons liquid shortening, a little more than two cups cold water or sweet milk. Mix all the dry ingre- dients together; add the water and shortening and stir briskly, beating all the lumps out. Should be thin BREAD MAKING. 65 enough to settle itself easily in the oiled pan, and be baked in a hot oven until well done. Brown Bread^ Steamed. One cup granulated corn meal, one cup rye or best graham meal, one tablespoon white sugar, pinch of salt, two level teaspoons baking powder, one tablespoon liquid shortening, one and one third cups cold water. Mix all the dry ingredients together and stir in the liquid very thoroughly. The batter should be like thick cake, if too stiff add more water. Put in oiled pan and steam three hours. When done set in oven fifteen minutes. Dried fruits of any kind may be used in this bread. Unleavened Bread. There is no bread as sweet and wholesome as that made with pure soft water, flour or meal, with plenty of fresh air beaten or kneaded into it, and the hot air of a good oven to bake it. Add to these one who is in- terested in it, has plenty of common sense, and failure will be turned into success. Gems of Entire Wheat Flour. Measure three level cups of sifted Franklin Mills entire wheat, add two cups of cold water, and a table- spoon liquid shortening. Beat and stir very briskly in the fresh air two or three minutes until the batter is smooth and full of air bubbles. Then add two or three tablespoons of cold water and beat again; it should be a little thicker than, sponge cake. Put at once in hot oiled gem pans and set in a very hot oven. Bake half 66 THE ART OF LIVING. an hour or until done brown all over. When done re- move from pans, lay apart on plate to cool fifteen min- utes before being eaten. Never cut them open, but pull them apart, and, if they are too moist, make them a little thicker next time. When just right they are light as sponge cake. They may be made with equal parts of sweet milk and cold water. Gems of Graham Flour. Three level cups of fine or coarse graham flour, — only the best will do, — two and a half cups of the coldest water or equal parts of milk and water. Beat and bake in hot pans as other gems. Should be a little thicker than entire wheat. Northern Beaten Biscuits. Four cups best entire wheat flour sifted, two table- spoons liquid shortening, one cup and a half or more of the coldest water to make a dough stiff enough to handle. Stir it well with a spoon, turn out clean from the bowl upon the floured molding board, knead, roll out, fold and stretch, turning and folding to work into it plenty of air ten or fifteen minutes, when it will be smooth and springy. Roll it half an inch thick, cut with a very small cutter, prick through with a fork twice, put on perforated plates or shallow tin with space between, and bake in a hot oven. The top grate is best if not too hot. They should rise quickly, and turn them so as to brown all over. They are very sweet and light. bread making. 67 Southern Beaten Biscuits. These are made of white flour as in the preceding recipe, using one cup of water or sweet milk and a half teaspoon salt. Graham Rolls. These in their early days — nearly a half century ago- — were known as "Dr. Trail's Premium Bread." The process of making, manipulating, and baking is similar to the Beaten Biscuits (omit the shortening). If the dough is too soft the bread will not be light ; if too stiff it will be hard and inferior. Roll the dough three fourths of an inch thick, cut in strips an inch wide and three or four inches long, form them with the hands into neat rolls, lay on a shallow baking tin, space be- tween each one, prick and bake in a hot oven. Turn and brown them on all sides. When Just right they are light, crack open, and when done do not yield to pres- sure. Aerated Crackers and Wafers. The dough is made and manipulated in the same manner as for Beaten Biscuit and Graham Rolls. For crackers cut one fourth inch "thick and cut wafers thin as a knife blade, using small cutter. Bake crispy but do not burn them, and prick to prevent blistering. Diamonds. One pint of graham meal or the same of entire wheat sifted, and pour over it sufficient boiling water (it must be boiling) to make a dough stiff enough to easily handle but not too stiff, as the bread will not be light. 68 THE ART or LIVING. Turn at once upon a well floured molding board, knead to get it into shape. Roll three fourths of an inch thick, cut in strips an inch wide and in small diamonds. Put on grate or perforated plates with space between each one, set in hot oven and turn them to brown all over. When done remove all dry flour adhering to them with a clean whisk brush or soft towel. They should be light and very sweet. Aerated breads may be cut in any shape preferred, — sticks, finger rolls, rings or small balls; the smaller biscuit or rolls are the lighter they are. Corn Meal Biscuits. As a rule, corn meal should be cooked or scalded be- fore being made into bread. Pour boiling water upon two cups of fine granulated white or yellow corn meal and stir to a dough stiff enough to handle. T'urn upon a well floured molding board, roll an inch thick, cut in small biscuit, and bake in hot oven. White Corn Cakes. Two level cups white corn meal, one tablespoon sugar, one tablespoon shortening, pinch of salt and two or more cups boiling water or sweet milk. Stir and beat all well together. Bake in shallow tin or on pan in drop cakes. Hot Mush Rolls. Into a pint of boiling hot cooked cereal of any kind stir sufficient graham meal or entire wheat to make a rather stiff dough. Turn at once upon a well floured board, knead very little, cut in any desired shape and bake in a quick oven. Left over cereals may be warmed and cooked in the above manner. bread making. 69 Corn Meal Dodgers. Scald one pint of granulated meal — white or yellow — with boiling water to form a dough that can be dropped from the spoon. Drop in spoonfuls on an oiled griddle or baking tin. Have them one half inch thick and bake in oven or cook on the stove, turning when brown on one side. Turn two or three times until well done. Brown Bread. Pour boiling water over two cups of coarse granu- lated white or yellow corn meal, stir it well, not getting it very stiff. After it has cooled add rye or graham meal to make a dough stiff enough to knead. Knead and put in a thick, brown, deep pan or heavy bread tin and set in a moderate oven. It should bake very slowly, with a cover over it, until nearly done. This bread should be very sweet, and the addition of seeded raisins is an improvement. Steam it if you wish. Zwieback. Cut slices of good bread of any kind (an inferior bread will not do), put them on a grate or shallow tin in a moderate oven and bake them brown and crispy all through. This is twice baked bread, the starch thor- oughly cooked. It is the best of toast for any one, and moistened with water it is ready for serving with any desired dressing. Note. — All unleavened bread, especially gems, re- quire an oven too hot for other bread. The pans should be small, filled full, and dough should rise above the pans iu ten minutes. CEREALS. The use of cereals is becoming more general, but the manner in which they are half cooked and swallowed without mastication renders them a very objectionable article of food. This has doubtless caused the increas- ing number of malted or predigested foods on the mar- ket. Some of the statements in regard to their superior food values are very misleading, and good bread dextri- nized in the oven would be as good or better and much less expensive. Our grains have been dissected into many parts, and predigested, until the oldest grain eater has forgotten the taste of genuine wheat, corn, or oats. A half century ago we had plain cereals in bulk and they seemed to be all sufficient for health. In these more modern days the array is truly bewildering, and we pay three or four times as much for dissected grains put up in fancy packages as for an article in bulk that is just as good. But this is not all; we listen to the constant a})peals made in this public way to the weak conditions of the stomach, brain, and nerves, that we are told demand these things. With the wonderful array of foods and medicines that constantly remind people they are ill and need them, the marvel is that there is suffi- cient good nerve and muscle to carry on the work of the world. "But you would not discard them?" No, but 1 would cultivate health in the stomach by discarding soft food until we learn that our teeth are for use. I CEREALS. 71 » would have people learn what and where health really is, instead of living in the mazes of un-health by con- stantly catering to "weak digestion/' The human mouth and its appendages, tongue, teeth, glands with their juices, is a perfect predigesting laboratory. Then why not use it instead of closing the door and letting food glide into the stomach at railway speed? How little we know about the real comfort and ease of predigest- ing our food so thoroughly that we never realize we have a stomach ! Cereals require more time for cooking than is usu- ally given on the packages. All coarse cereals, cracked and pearled wheat, barley, hominy, oats, and corn re- quire from four to eight hours to steam or boil, and from four to five or more cups of water to one cup of grain, adding boiling water as it cooks away. Serve cereals with fruit, honey, maple syrup, or anything you wish, but cream should not be used with sugar, and they should always be eaten with hard bread or rolls to in- sure thorough mastication. White Corn Samp. This is far superior to "hulled corn," is less oily than yellow corn, and is very nutritious. Wash one cup of the corn and put it in one quart of cold water over night. Early in the morning put it with the water in the double boiler or steamer and cook eight or ten hours, or boil it until tender ; when done it should be as artistic as a dish of well cooked rice. Add boiling water if necessary while cooking. Serve as a vegetable or cereal. 72 THE ART OF LIVING. EiCE^ Steamed. Wash thoroughly one cup of rice. Put in a porcelain dish with three cups of cold water, set in steamer and cook three hours. Add boiling water if necessary but do not break the grains. One cup of raisins may be cooked with the rice or a cup of figs cut fine, or dates seeded and carefully stirred in with a fork when the rice is half or nearly done. RiCE^ Boiled. Wash one cup of the best rice and put in a porcelain kettle with three quarts of rapidly boiling water. Cover and boil one half hour, drain off the water and set on back of stove or in the oven to steam dry. Do not stir it, and when done it will be a mass of entire white grains. May be served as a vegetable. Use as little salt as pos- sible in cereals. Many people cook cereals in a moderate oven, putting them to cook in the evening and in the morning they are ready for breakfast. Use the heavy earthenware with a cover for this purpose. VEGETABLES. Vegetables should be fresh, of medium size, and the best quality. Wash them thoroughly, remove imper- fections, and, as a rule, do not let them stand in water previous to cooking. Being rather coarse in their na- ture they should be sparingly eaten by those with weak digestion. Baked or steamed their juices and flavors are retained; boiled they are mostly lost, and become insipid, unless boiled in very little water, closely cov- ered, and taken up the moment they are done. They must be cooked until a fork. will easily penetrate them, and every cook will learn by experience to regulate the time of cooking. Fresh, tender vegetables cook much more quickly than old ones. Put an inverted saucer, plate or rack in the bottom of kettle, lay the vegetables on that and use as little water as possible, replenishing from the teakettle if necessary. To boil or stew, drop them in boiling water, and boil steadily but not hard, as the water never gets hotter than 213*, and just boiling is sufficient to cook them, and will keep the mealy potatoes whole. Dandelions, and Other Greens. These include a score or more of edibles nearly all waste. They must be well washed to free them from sand and insects. Boil or steam them from two to three hours. Drain and cut fine before seasoning. 74 the art of living. Spinach. Cook by steam, or in a kettle without water, simmer- ing in its own juice until tender. Asparagus. With a sharp knife peel the tough skin from the large stalks. Cook them whole or cut in inch pieces. Serve plain or on slices of toast with or without white sauce. String Beans. Break off the ends of pods, remove the strings, and cut into inch pieces. Cook two or three hours, having but little water in them when done. Cauliflov^^er- and Cabbage. These and all similar vegetables may be washed and stand a few moments in salted water to free them from insects. Remove all coarse, withered leaves, cut in sections if large and cook from one to two hours, — excepting cauliflower, which, if boiled, should stand in kettle with the flowerets above the water, and it requires less time to cook. Serve plain or with white sauce. Green Peas and Beans. Peas will usually cook in half an hour, beans in an hour or more, depending upon the variety. Green Corn. Corn must be of the best and fresh, as it loses its flavor very quickly. If boiled, put it in a kettle of cold VEGETABLES. 75 water, let it come to a boil, and cook three minutes, just long enough to set the milk. After a certain point is passed it becomes tough and hard. Steam six or eight minutes. Cut from the cob and stew three minutes. Succotash. This name came from the Narragansett Indians, who called it "m' sickquatash.^' Lima beans are the best for succotash. Cook them tlioroughly. Cut the corn from the cob in small pieces, press all the juice from the hulls left on the cobs, and add to the beans, season and cook five minutes. Use equal parts of beans and corn or more corn if preferred. Beets. Wash and leave the tops an inch long. Cook an hour or more, depending upon age and size. When done dip in cold water and remove the skins. Turnips^ Carrots, and Parsnips. These should be of good quality and medium size. Cook them whole or cut in slices or dice, in as little water as possible unless you steam them. Salsify or Oyster Plant. Wash and scrape the roots, cut in slices, and stew or steam until tender. Serve with sauce made of liquid in which they were cooked, adding water or milk and thick- ening with flour. 76 the art of living. Potatoes. Cook potatoes in their "jackets" and peel just before serving. If boiled, the moment they are done drain off the water, and let them stand a few moments on the back of the range. A good potato — and no other is worth eating — does not require the extra work of mashing or stuffing. Old potatoes are of very little value. They may be pared and stand in cold water an hour before cooking. If they have been well preserved, are smooth and solid, they are better baked. Bake potatoes in a moderate oven and when done prick or press lightly in a clean towel to let the steam escape, and serve at once. Sweet Potatoes. Baking is the best method of cooking them. If boiled, when nearly done complete the cooking in the oven. Summer Squash. These should be tender enough to be cooked whole, but if not, then j^are, cut, and remove the seeds before cooking. When done put them in a thin cloth bag or square of cloth kept for that purpose and press the water out. Season and reheat them. Winter Squash. Cut in the size pieces you wish, remove all spots from the skin, scrape out the seeds, and cook from thirty minutes to an hour. When done remove from the skins with a spoon, season and mash very fine. If very dry, add a little boiling water when seasoning. Squash is very nice baked. vegetables. 77 Tomatoes. These are properly a fruit, but are usually classed with vegetables, and are better uncooked. The solid varieties are superior for all purposes. Never leave them in the sun to ripen when picked too green, but put them in a cool dark place away from the light. Pour boiling water over them and remove the skins, slice, put in porcelain kettle without water and stew fifteen min- utes. If very juicy add toasted bread crumbs. They may be baked whole as you would bake apples. A favor- ite dish with many is one quart of stewed tomatoes and one cup or more of cold cooked rice ; heat and season. Onions. There is a great diversity of opinion regarding the use of onions as food. But whatever may be said against them, they are very largely used, and no other vegetable contains such possibilities for flavoring as the onion. The plainest fare may be made acceptable with only the daintiest taste of onion. The more thoroughly onions, either cooked or raw, are masticated the less odorous the breath. The white skinned are the mildest. Peel them, and, if strong, boil ten minutes with a small pinch of baking soda. Pour off that water and either cook by steam or boil in as little water as possible until tender. Or they may be sliced thin and cook in half an hour. Legumes. Beans, peas, lentils, and peanuts belong to this family, which are often called "pulse." They are of more im- 78 THE ART OF LIVING. portanee than other vegetables, being very rich in pro- tein, beans containing, according to Payen, more than twice as much as the best wheat. The legumes are defi- cient in fat, hence the laboring man's demand for plenty of fat in his beans. They are so concentrated and nutri- tious they should be used very sparingly by those not engaged in physical labor. Beans, Baked. Soak a quart of pea beans or yellow eyes over night. In the morning, drain, put them in kettle with plenty of water and one half teaspoonful baking soda. Let them boil in this water five minutes. Then pour off the water and rinse thoroughly in cold water, and let them cook in fresh water until soft but not mushy. Pour into an earthen bean pot, season with a little salt and small piece of butter. Wesson oil, or Ko-Nut. Cover with water and bake several hours covered, and when nearly done remove cover and let them brown for an hour. A small onion in the bottom of the bean pot gives them a fine flavor, and many people add a level tablespoonful of sugar when seasoning them. Do not sweeten with molasses, and be sure they are well done. Beans, Stewed. Prepare as for baking, and cook slowly several hours^ and do not have them sloppy when done. Peas and Lentils. Prepare and stew or bake the same as dried beans. vegetables. 79 Legume Soups or Purees. These are very nutritious, and with bread, gems, or rolls would make an excellent dinner. Pick over and wash one pint of white beans, soak them in a quart of water over night. In the morning drain, add two quarts of cold water, stew slowly three or four hours, then mash through a sieve and return to kettle. There should be about two quarts of soup, which, if thin, may be thickened with flour, made into a smooth paste with cold water, which add slowly to the soup and cook ten minutes. When ready to serve it should be of creamy consistency. Black wax beans, Limas, or any good bean may be prepared in the same way; also dried peas and lentils. Any other vegetable may be used in the above manner, with less time in cooking. Plain ^^hite Sauce. To one pint of boiling water add one heaping table- spoon of flour, one half teaspoon salt made smooth with two tablespoons of butter or oil and cool water. Dip a little of the hot water on the mixture in the bowl, care- fully blending it, then add slowly to the hot water, stir- ring five minutes; strain if not smooth. A suitable sauce for vegetables. The above formula is the same for meat stock, milk or fruit juice. In making gravies or liquid sauces, the liquid should be below the boiling point when the thick- ening is stirred in. 80 the art of living. Brown Flour for Gravies. Put a pint or more of flour in a pan and set in the oven or on the stove and stir to prevent burning. When cold put in a glass can, cover and put away for use. Note. — It would be a saving of time, care, and flavor of vegetables, if j^ou have no steam cooker, to cook them in the heavy granite or earthen ware with close covers, and set in the oven with barely boiling water to cover them. Simmer slowly till done, leaving only sufficient liquid for serving them, which a little experience will give. In this way there will be no waste from steaming kettles, and the odors of strong vegetables will be con- fined to the oven. FRUITS Fruits are food and may be eaten as an entire meal, or part of a meal, never between meals unless one takes the juice as a drink. The apple and grape of our native fruits are entitled to the highest place. Eipe fruit is best eaten without sugar, the rich flavor is near the skin; reject the hard seeds of small fruits and also the skins of fruits and pulp and seeds of grapes. Only the juice of melons should be swallowed. Wait for them to ripen in your locality and never eat a stale melon. Fruits should not be spiced nor seasoned with flavoring extracts, but flavor one kind with another if you wish. All large fruits should be washed and dried with a clean towel before serving. Small fruits may be put in a colander a few at a time, set in a pan of cool water and rinsed with the hands. Eat very sparingly of acid fruits. Cooking Fruits. Wash small fruits, put them in a saucepan with very little water, and simmer slowly until done. Turn care- fully into an earthen dish, cover, and stand in a cool place. Always use care in handling cooked fruits, pre- serving their shape if possible, and cover to prevent escape of the aroma. Sub-acid Apples may be pared, quartered, and sim- mered two hours, closely covered, or until amber colored, in just water enough to cover them. When partially cool turn, without crushing them, into a glass or china dish and cover. 83 THE ART OF LIVING. Apples^ Sweet or Sour^ should be covered. Bake very slowly with a little water in the plate till of a rich brown. Apples or Pears may be baked in an earthen jar wHh a cover until amber colored. Core and quarter them and lay them in the jar skin side up; pour over a small cup of water and half cup of sugar if you wish. Quinces and Sweet Apples may also be prepared and baked in the above manner, placed in alternate layers in the jar, and baked two hours, or until done, but must not lose their form. Ehubarb may be cut in inch pieces without peeling. Scald it in boiling water five minutes, drain, put in saucepan without water and with one cup of sugar to one quart of rhubarb. Simmer very slowly until just barely done. Cranberries should be stewed in very little water, strain to remove skins if you wish, then sweeten. Bananas^ when yellow-skinned and solid. Peel them, scrape off the white pith, lay them in pie plate with three or four spoonfuls water and bake in a hot oven twenty minutes or until soft. Pineapples should be shredded with a silver fork, or sliced. Swallow only the juice. Oranges may have one end cut off, then, with a spoon,, eat only the juice. Canning Fruits. Fresh fruits are easily obtained all the year round. Canning, pickling, and preserving, the making of jams, jellies, and marmalades, that are such an additional burden to the housewife, might be much reduced. But FRUITS. 83 SO long as we must have them prepare them at home and do not depend upon the grocer for any of these goods, as they are of doubtful quality. We are constantly being warned against the use of these things, yet because they are cheap the warnings are not heeded. Canning fac- tories cannot use the best fruit and sugar for Jams and jellies. Apples, heing cheap, are the basis of the cheaper grades of these goods, used with coloring and flavoring, and glucose, a cheap product for sweetening them; and the sweets are only eight or ten cents a glass, and "such a bargain.'' A ten cent Jar of Jam cannot contain ex- pensive ingredients, and the less said about their com- position the better. In canned vegetables are found poisonous preservatives, and one had better use fresh vegetables. Even tomatoes do not escape being doc- tored. Fruits for canning should not be overripe. See that cans, rubbers, and covers are perfect. Sterilize the covers in a basin of boiling water, and heat the cans in warm water before filling them. Small fruits should be Just barely cooked in a little water. Larger fruits should be pared, quartered, and cooked until tender. Seckel pears should be cooked whole until amber colored, and all fruit should be canned without sugar. Only the best varieties of tomatoes are suitable for canning, and unless one is very careless in sealing cans no fruit will ferment; if it does then throw it away, as no amount of doctoring will make it suitable to be eaten. Fruit Juices. Grapes and small fruits may be washed, put in sauce kettle with a little water, heated to extract the JuicCj 84 THE ART OF LIVING. strained through Jelly bag, reheated, skimmed and canned boiling hot like fruits, without sugar. Fruit juices are better than jellies for those who need them. Dried Fruits. The sweet dried fruits are very nutritious ; they should be well washed in warm water before being eaten. Prunes and all other dried fruits are better if made ten- der by soaking in tepid water, or swelling and simmer- ing if necessary several hours on the back of the range or covered in the oven. No sugar is required in the better quality of these fruits. Many of our apples, peaches, and apricots are bleached and thus poisoned. The brown sun-dried fruit is better. ANIMAL FOODS. Although a non-flesh eater more than half my We, Tet, so long as people use meat, I have made it a part ot iy work to teach them its hygienic cookery. The mod- ern methods of meat cooking are burdensome to the cook To me they have been a very simple part ot the daily routine. Meat once a day was sufficient for people engaged in any kind of labor and they required no fancy or combination dishes to minister to their appetite. Animal food comprises fish, flesh, fowl, milk, and eggs. Beef and mutton are considered the best. Fowls are nearly as nutritious as beef. Pork and veal are not easily digested. Whether fowl and swine are scavengers depends upon those who have the care and feeding of them and one cannot be too careful in this matter. Fish contain- ing the least oil are the best, and sea food are scaven- gers The dainties prepared from the internal organs of animals are inferior to their flesh, yet if not used the flesh would be more expensive than it now is Oysters clams, and all of this class are a low order of food, yet are deemed great luxuries. Milk, the condensed essence of the cow mother, is produced from the same food that grows her flesh, but was designed expressly for the grow- in- of the infant calf world until able to forage for themselves. Milk is an extremely sensitive fluid and normally would not be exposed to light or air. Strange that man is the only mammal never yet weaned, when he knows that milk is never free from atmospheric 86 THE ART OF LIVING. microbes except when taken in the natural way ! Eggs are strictly animal food, the condensed chicken in embryo. Eggs, milk and its products contain no waste and are so highly organized and nutritious that thtir excessive use in the absence of flesh often produces an excess of fat, bloat, and rheumatic, gouty, and other seri- ous disturbances. Animals for the table, whether for their flesh, milk, or eggs, should be fed on the cleanest food, should drink pure water, be kept in clean sur- roundings, and be well cared for in every way. Never purchase a piece of stale meat because it is cheap — it is dear at any price. Cold storage meats so largely used are deprived of nutrient qualities and ilavors by long keeping. Canned meats contain inju- rious preservatives. Meats and fish deteriorate through the salting process. The flesh of young animals is less nutritious than of those more mature. Steaks and chops are too expensive except for those with a full purse. Less expensive cuts are more nutritious and go much farther in feeding a family. Meats should be made clean before cooking by wiping with a clean damp towel or rinsing in tepid water and wiping. Pay special atten- tion to the inside of fowl and fish. Meat should be slowly and well cooked, but not ruined by drying in a hot oven. When steamed nothing is lost in weight or flavor and the cooking is less work. Salt fish and very salt beef should soak over night in cold water to remove all the salt possible. MEAT COOKERY. Baked or Eoasted Meats. The process is similar for all meats. Wipe the meat with damp towel, put it in bake pan and set in a very hot oven that it may sear all over quickly, or sear it in a hot frying pan on the stove, turning as you would steak. Cooked in a double roasting pan the flavor is better retained, and no basting is required; otherwise cover it with a deep pan, and let it cook in its own juices without water or salt. If very lean lay over it beef drip- pings or thin slices of fat. One must use one's own ex- perience as to time of cooking, but it must cook slowly and be well done without burning. When done remove to a warm platter and thicken the gravy, adding water if necessary. A heaping tablespoon of flour is sufficient for a pint of gravy; if too thick add boiling water and cook a little longer. Boiled and Stewed Meats. All kinds of meats, including fowls, are boiled or stewed in a similar manner. If the piece is mutton, remove the thin skin, as therein lies the flavor disliked by many. Put in the kettle and pour sufficient boiling water over to just cover it. Let it come to a boil, but do not skim it, then set it where it will slowly cook. If the meat is young and a small piece, it will cook in an hour and a half or two hours, but if old it may require five or six hours. Cut in pieces the size for serving, if 88 THE ART OF LIVING. you wish meat stewed, and proceed as in boiling. Add boiling water if necessary while cooking and have suffi- cient for gravy when done. Take up the meat on a platter and, if the liquid is too fat, remove it and thicken the gravy with Hour made into a smooth paste with a little cold water. Salt the gravy but not the meat. If flavorings are desired a finely minced onion, a little celery or parsley may be used. Pot Roast of Beef. Put the meat in a pan and pour boiling water over it to retain the juices ; then put it in the pot or kettle with one or two cups of boiling water (depending upon its size). Cover closely and set where it will slowly cook or simmer until very tender. Do not let it burn, and have liquid for gravy when done. It is a good plan to put a small rack, a saucer or plate under meat when thus cooking. Broiled Meats. Beefsteak should be trimmed and bone removed if large. Place it on a hot oiled broiler over hot coals. Open the stove dampers to allow the escape of smoke and gas. Sear quickly upon each side to retain the juices and turn often to prevent burning. A thick steak will cook in ten or twelve minutes. When done, remove to a warm platter and allow each person to season to taste. Chops or steaks may also be broiled over hot coals in a very hot frying pan, or in a very hot oven, some pre- ferring the latter, as it is less care and results are as good. MEAT COOKERY. 89 To have the best Hamburg steak, purchase the round or even a lower priced cut (far more nutritious than sirloin), grind or chop it and make into small flat cakes with the hand and broil in a hot oiled frying pan. An- other way is to stew it in a little water for two hours or less, season slightly and flavor with a little onion or mint. Chicken and Turkey. To lessen work steam them whole, or bake in double or covered pan and save care in basting. A cup of water may be put in the pan. Some of our modern cooks are not using dressing in fowls or fish, which is a great saving of work for hands and digestion. Fish. Fish of all kinds, large or small, are more delicate when steamed than prepared in any other way. If boiled, wrap in a clean white cloth and lay on a rack or inverted saucer in kettle with a quart or more of boiling water. Cover and cook gently until done. If baked, lay the whole fish on a rack in pan, skin side down, add a cup of water or equal parts of milk and water, cover and bake from half an hour to an hour or more, accord- ing to size. When done remove to warm platter and make the gravy, adding water or milk to that in the pan. If one must fry fish use a kettle of deep fat. Albumen. Albumens are flesh formers. Water boils at 212o and never gets any hotter, no matter how agitated it be- comes, but the friction of it will spoil nice potatoes by bursting the skins. Temperature just below ISO^ is 90 THE ART OF LIVING. proper to cook meats and Have the albumen digestible. When put in boiling water the outside albumen is coagu- lated and the pores closed to retain the juices. The effect is the same whether boiled, baked, broiled, or steamed. The brown flak}^ substance in the broth is a digestible form of albumen, and very nutritious. The white of an egg is the most perfect type of pure albumen. It coagulates at from 130o to 140o, at from I6O0 to ISO© it is soft and jelly-like, at 212o indigestible. If in cooking it is kept at 160° or much lower it is nearly as digestible as in the raw state, being a flaky jelly. Egg Omelet. To the yolks of four beaten eggs add a pinch of salt and four tablespoons hot water; then carefully cut and fold in the whites that have been beaten to a stiff dry foam, thus incorporating all the air possible. Pour the mixture evenly into a hot oiled frying pan and cook slowly until lightly browned on the bottom; then set in oven to brown on the top. When done deftly fold and remove to a warm platter. This omelet should be soft and creamy. Fried egg? are very indigestible. Poached Eggs. Into a shallow pan two thirds full of boiling water put oiled muffin rings, and break one egg into each. The water should just cover them, and as soon as a film has settled over them, remove with an oiled skimmer to slices of toast. They must not boil, but be like jelly when done. In making custards, the milk or water used should be hot and stirred carefully into the eggs MEAT COOKERY. 91 and sugar, and either steamed or set in a pan of hot water in the oven to gradually reach the jelly condition. Test with a knife blade. Eggs Jellied. Put the number you wish to cook in a warm deep kettle or dish, pour boiling water over them to the depth of four or six inches, and let them stand away from the stove ten minutes, longer will do no harm, and in this form they are easily digested. Soups, Purees ais^d Stews. Clear thin soups have very little value. Purees are thick soups, and well made of nutritious material might, with good bread, make an entire dinner. Left overs of any kind of meat may be used as an addition to a puree of split peas or beans, or other vegetables may be used in the same way. If you buy a soup bone have it cut in small pieces; wash, put in cold water to cover, let it come to a boil and cook slowly until meat will drop from the bones. Remove the meat, bones and surplus fat, then add sliced vegetables of any sort you wish and stew until done; or they may be put in before the meat is done. Such stews may be served with dumplings, or zweiback (twice baked bread), gems or rolls. A twenty-five cent piece of meat cooked in the above manner will furnish more nutriment for a large family than three times that amount spent for roasts or steaks. NUTS AS FOOD. Generally considered, nnts have been regarded as a dessert luxury, or to be eaten between meals. But their culture as a special article of food is destined in the near future to assume immense proportions. We should not become nut eaters, but if it were impossible to pro- cure animal foods in this the greatest of meat eating nations, there need be no starvation, no loss of nerve nor strength of muscle. Animal foods are becoming more costly every year, and should they reach beyond the purse of the world's toilers, then they may with complacency turn to the tree- bearing meats and plant-producing oils and be bounte- ously fed and nourished. But with the physical consti- tution of the present human race there are many who cannot digest nuts, and would need to gradually accus- tom themselves to their use. However, we may in per- fect serenity of soul turn to the grains, fruits, and vege- tables and find therein all the elements required to sus- tain an active life beyond the century mark. Nuts should be ground fine in the food chopper, and once grinding prepares them for serving on the table in place of meats. When ground to a paste they are ready to use in gravies, soups, stews, and shortening if one desires to so use them, although they are expensive for this purpose. When made into paste, a little water and salt converts them into nut butter. >TUTS AS FOOD. 93 Peanuts should be eaten uncooked or but very slightly browned, as when a deep brown they are like burned fat and quite indigestible. There are preparations of predigested nut foods upon the market each having its special merits. No one article requires more thorough mastication than nuts. They should be reduced to liquid in the mouth, and elaborate mixtures with other food should be avoided. VEGETABLE OILS and FRIED FOODS. When our hygiene has reached far enough to exclude fried and shortened foods from the present overburdened list of such eatables then we shall have greatly reduced expense and taken another step forward in the culture of health by right living. There are easier and better methods of preparing food, but so long as we indulge in them the purest fat should be used. Although vegetable oils have been extensively used in this and other countries for many years, yet they have not come into such general use as their merits demand. They should meet with special favor on account of their economy, purity and ease of digestion. The oils in gen- eral use are Olive Oil, Wesson Cooking Oil and Ko-Nut. It is possible to obtain a pure olive oil, but most of it is adulterated with an inferior grade of cotton seed and other oils, and this is why it becomes rancid and an un- pleasant flavor is imparted to food cooked in it. Wesson Cooking Oil, manufactured in Savannah, Ga., is a highly refined product of the best cotton seed, and the manufacturers tell us that "the objectionable char- acteristics are entirely removed by a process analogous to the refining of raw sugar. It bears the same relation to ordinary cotton seed oil that granulated sugar does to common brown sugar.*'' And so the beautiful cotton plant not onl}'^ furnishes fabric for the world's millions, but within its snow white down is matured the seed that art and skill have made available for the use of man and VEGETABLE OILS AND FRIED FOOD. 95 beast. Let us be proud of this product of American soil, and never hesitate to call it cotton seed oil. The stately cocoanut also claims recognition but not supremacy, although with her elegantly plumed head she towers far above her sister of the cotton fields. For many years in Germany and England the nuts have been made into butter for general use. In the tropics the oil from the nuts has been one of the staple articles of food for centuries. The India Refining Company in Phila- delphia, Pa., have perfected a process for purifying and sterilizing the oil of the cocoanut fruit. "This process renders it pure, wholesome, and attractive and it keeps in this condition for an indefinite time.'' It bears the pleasant name of Ko-N^ut, a pure fruit fat, and may in the near future be produced from home grown fruit. The great economy in their production precludes the necessity for adulteration, and should one product fail there will be no lack of supply from other undeveloped sources. These fats do not become rancid and may be used in all cookery ; even in the finest cakes, sauces, and salads their presence cannot be detected. With the use of water for mixing they completely take the place of all animal products, even in seasoning vegetables, and with a little salt may be used as butter. With these desirable products one finds it easier to be a strict vegetarian in the present century, and wherever grocers introduce these articles they become very popular with those who •Qse a mixed diet. SALADS. From ancient literature we learn that "the existence of sallets arose out of hygienic principles." Leeks, onions, garlic, and cucumbers were freely eaten by the Egyptians, the usual breakfast being made of bread and onions. Lettuce and endive flavored with minced onions were daily used in Kome, dressed with oil and honey. Their salads were made of edible roots, herbs, green leaves, and flowers "served with vinegar, sallet oyl and sugar.'' Until the close of the eighteenth century our ancestors ate salads before the heavier dishes of the table. In salads we get our raw food, of herbs, vege- tables, green leaves, flowers and fruits, and all should be as fresh and crisp as possible. Oil, sugar, lemon juice, or vinegar are the proper seasonings, and each person should do his or her own seasoning. Hot, fiery dress- ings are not necessary on these fresh edibles, and mix- tures should be avoided as much as possible. SEASONINGS and CONDIMENTS. It is useless to expect to restore the flavor of wasted nutrients by seasoning our food. It is quite impossible to duplicate or improve nature's delicate chemistry by additions after subtracting, in stewpans and steaming kettles, the very best of the article by such cooking. Few of us know anything about the real taste of any cooked vegetable or fruit unless it is cooked by baking covered, or by steaming and testing it unseasoned. The careless methods of boiling destroy all the fine flavors and waste the salts, so we get the tasteless water-soaked vegetable, and "season well with salt, pepper and but- ter/' and meats are deluged with sharp sauces, pickled and spiced condiments, and thus our food is disguised and taste never knows what real food is like. It should be the custom for every one to season his or her own food ; indeed, this would be economy, for there are many people who never eat anything, no matter how well it may be seasoned, without an extra seasoning of salt and butter. Pepper should not be put into food, as many do not use it. Lemon juice is better than vinegar where an acid is wanted. Sugar is so cheap the temptation to use it is great, and so our fruit and everything possible is ruined with an excess of it. Fresh fruit and sweet herb flavors are better than extracts. Wines and liquors have no legiti- mate place in food or drink, yet there are thousands of recipes containing liquor that find their way into our 98 THE ART OF LIVING. homes in cookbooks, papers and magazines. Spices are largely adulterated and if used at all should be pur- chased whole and ground as needed. Need we wonder that ill health and intemperance still hold the human fort? Natural hunger does not call for those things that merely taste good while going down and that the stom- ach does not know what to do with after they get there. The crippled, overtaxed machinery does the best it can while run on the high pressure plan, and the residue of refuse is stored up in bones, joints, and tissues, which later invite the stray traveler in the guise of fever, colds, malaria, rheumatism, or other poison to walk in. The robust, healthy (?) looking person is often the victim, while the thinner and more delicate escape with only '^iver complaint" and "dyspepsia" attached to their anatomy with such a grip they fail to die from either surfeit or starvation ! As we advance toward a more wisely selected diet we shall find i:he necessity for con- diments and seasonings diminishing. DESSERTS. Why do we have them ? Simply because they are cus- tomary and the habits of civilization demand that we eat them after having 'eaten an abundance of more sub- stantial food. Woman, the chief caterer to the human palate and also the greatest sufferer, because of her artis- tic creations in the department of desserts and other sweets, has not yet seen fit to make the necessary inno- vations to insure a decided change in this important matter of domestic economy, which means less money outside the home and more health inside the home. If custom would reverse itself and eat the desserts at the beginning of the dinner, or eat them along with the dinner, there would be less gluttony and a long step- would be taken toward health and temperance. And more than this: intelligent people would soon find that the accustomed desserts were not at all essential to their comfort, and wonder why they had been so long in find- ing it out. Every reader of papers, magazines, and cookbooks finds a surfeit of cakes, pastries, and puddings, besides a most bewildering array of gustatory temptations. In this book, that means better health and longer life, it is not advisable to burden the cook with them. From a physiological, scientific, and medical standpoint our diet is one-sided because of the excess of sweets, starch, and 100 THE ART OF LIVING. fats; these are flesh and fat formers and difficult of digestion. We have so many sweet teeth that the tempta- tion to the excessive use of sugar is very great. But if we must have something to "top off with" there is noth- ing better than good bread and butter and a dish ol' cooked fruit; or dates, figs, raisins, prunes that have been well washed and covered with sufficient water to plump them to normal size. This may be done in a few hours on the back of the range or by steaming a fehort time. A moderate use of loaf sugar or the finest quality of candied sweets, maple sugar or honey with bread, especially for children, would be preferable to the high grade cookery the present age demands. PASTRIES. Many people think fruit is improved by baking be- tween two crusts. If so prepared, then the very best of material is none too good. The crust should be plain, shortened with cream, butter, or vegetable oil, and the pies slowly and well baked, and containing as little sea- soning as possible. Bake everything you can with one crust. Put fruit in a deep dish with sugar, a little water, and lay over it a shortcake crust a half inch thick and bake slowly until well browned. " Shortcake baked, split open and spread with any kind of fruit, fresh or cooked, is preferable to the conventional pie. Custards should just cook slowly to a jelly without boiling. If to be poured over fresh fruit, use one tablespoon heap- ing full of cornstarch dissolved to one pint of boiling water for two eggs, and just let it come to a jelly stand- ing in a pan of water in the oven. Desserts should be eaten with bread to insure thorough mastication. CAKE. Let every intelligent woman consider for one half hour the days and weeks during one year of her life that are spent in beating and creaming eggs, butter, and sugar and the manufacture of cakes, big and little, that are then frosted, ornamented, and stuffed with rich cream, fruit, and other fillings. These please the eye and the palate for a brief moment only, are a waste of time, strength, and money, and do not in any sense con- tribute to the proper nourishment of the human temple. The penalties are paid in headaches, dyspepsia, and other ills that invite the doctor into our homes. A tea table would look "pretty bare and poverty stricken with- out cake," you say. Perhaps so, but why custom de- creed that cake should be nibbled 365 nights in the year instead of mornings or noons is perhaps due to the fact that woman is naturally the table caterer. She enjoys feeding on tidbits and sweet dainties on every possible occasion at home and abroad and delights in tempting- men with them, wlien they would doubtless prefer a slice of good bread and butter tbat would give far better sat- isfaction. Cake is never satisfying to a normal appe- tite and is a heavy tax on digestion when eaten at night. If used at all it should be the first course at dinner or taken with the dinner. Every kind of sweet may be mixed with pure soft water, hot or cold; milk is more clogging and heavy. Use less spice, eggs, and sugar; vegetable fats are more delicate than animal fats for such use. COMPOSITION OF FOOD PRODUCTS AND FOOD COMBINATIONS. In all articles of food, both animal and vegetable, there is more or less waste or refuse, — bones, seeds, skins, shells, and other waste. Prof. W. 0. Atwater tells us that "the proportions of refuse are from 8 to 10 per cent, in a round of beef, about 14 per cent, in eggs, 18 per cent, in a leg of mutton, 40 per cent, in chicken, and 50 per cent, or more in some kinds of fish. In such food materials as milk, flour, and bread there is no refuse. Ordinary flour contains about 121/2 per cent, or one eighth of water. The fatter kinds of meat con- tain from 15 to 50 per cent, and the lean meats from 50 to 75 per cent, of water. One third of the weight of bread and three fourths of the weight of potatoes con- sist of water. After removing the water, which is the same as any other water, and has no more value for nutriment, the edible portion remaining is called by chemists "water free substance." In nuts and grains there is very little waste as compared with flesh foods, but the per cent, of water in fruits and vegetables is very large. The nutrients are divided into four classes called pro- tein, fats, carbohydrates, and mineral matters. The terms "nitrogenous compounds," * 'albuminoids," and ""proteids" are aften applied to the "protein" compounds,. 104 THE ART OF LIVING. which are the builders and repairers of the body. The protein is the chief nutritive constituent of fish and eggs, lean meat, albumen and casein of milk and gluten of wheat, and is also found in beans, peas, and in aU kinds of vegetable food; nuts are rich in protein and fruits contain it to some extent. The fats we obtain from flesh food in the form of lard and suet ; from milk, in cream and butter; from the vegetable world, the grains, seeds and nuts in the form of oils; and indeed a little fat is found in nearly all food material. Carbo- hydrates are starch and sugar and are similar in chem- ical composition. Eice, potatoes, peas, beans, grains, nuts, and some fruits contain more or less starch and many of them are rich in sugar. Animal food is defi- cient in starch and sugar, only milk containing the lat- ter. These are the substances that the vital force trans- forms into blood that builds and keeps the body in repair. The body is nearly all liquid, and so is the food we consume. Then if it be pure and properl}^ cooked and eaten why need we drink water by the gallon to wash out impurities? Water is very much alive, and many cook it, the question being. Which is better to eat, the germs alive or dead? Food Combinations. The entire sentient world below man instinctively make their own combinations of food so long as left to themselves. But when the animal becomes domesticated, man makes them for him, and cultivates his taste, even for alcoholic ensilage. During the process of cultiva- COMPOSITION OF FOOD PRODUCTS. 105 tion, the culture of disease begins and the animal finally suffers many things in the way of diseases and physi- cians, as a partial compensation ( ?) for care and educa- tion into habits of civilized life. So with man in his early days, happy in his ignorance it was "folly to be wise" ; and so long as he accepted the wisdom of nature's chemist, he instinctively knew things as did the other animals. He had no need to ask what he should combine with this or that to render it har- monious in his anatomy, to build and repair his temple. But taste led him astray, and he began to study combi- nations. A little of this, so much of that, a little more of the other, must be taken each day to keep the temple in working order. Xot only that but different articles must agree well together to prevent internal quarrels. Food is all right in its purity and uncombined. The artificial chemist steps in and combines so rapidly, sep- arates the grains, minces the fruits, sterilizes and pre- digests so many things that have been under the ban of condemnation, what is one to do, or how really to know ? There seems no other way out but a common sense way. If we only had again our normal appetites we should know ; but having left the instinct away behind us in our search for ''nice" things, why not wait until it again asserts itself? For Nature knows just what she needs, while her cultivated, artificial self is in the darkness of ignorance. There are a few general rules that may be made plain and from these one will be able to guide one's self. Bread and ripe fruit without cream or sugar, or a small quantity of well cooked cereal with figs or dates, raisins 106 THE ART OF LIVING. or prunes, and bread are good combinations for break- fast or supper. Cream and sugar are not a wise combi- nation on any food nor in hot drinks. Meat, potato, and one other vegetable, or two at most, are a dinner combination. Use a solid and succulent vegetable at the same meal, one sweeter than the other. Sweet potato or squash with tomato, turnip, or onion. Baked beans may be eaten with tomatoes, but beans are so nutritious they need to be used with caution unless one is actively engaged. Puree of beans or peas with hard bread make a nutritious dinner. In hot weather meat iiaay be dispensed with as a rule, and vegetables used more freely, unless eggs and fish are substituted for meat. If animal food of any kind is used, nuts should not be eaten except to a limited extent. If meat is discarded, nuts may be used with the vegetable dinner, but they should be finely ground. Rice and white corn samp well cooked are good substitutes for potato. If fresh fruits of any kind are eaten with the dinner take them as the first course, and all desserts should be the first course instead of the last. Uncooked fruits and meats do not combine well, neither do raw fruits and vege- tables in many cases. Pork and beans saturated with vinegar, and hot brown bread, can be safely eaten by few except the outdoor laborer. The person with a normal appetite will be able to so combine his food as to produce good results. He will select from the menu that which appeals to him. He will masticate thoroughly, taking from forty to sixty minutes for his dinner, and will reject cellulose and COMPOSITION OF FOOD PRODUCTS. 107 other fibrous substance. Food thus digested in the mouth by the action of saliva is then prepared for the action of gastric juice in the stomach; and if food is plain and nutritious, combinations may be left to indi- vidual selection. A word of caution is necessary to persons who adopt a vegetable diet, as they are apt to forget that some of the substitutes used are more con- centrated than meat, and so partake of them to their injury, feeling that they must do this in order to keep up their strength. Peas, beans, and lentils contain more nutritious substance than meat or other vegetables. They are said to contain as much carbon as wheat and almost double the amount of nitrogen. This being the case we require but a limited quantity of these articles, instead of daily use, and the same may be said of nuts, also of cream, cheese, and eggs, all so often used to excess at every meal through fear that the system will not be properly nourished. Whole wheat bread is essential and far better, in the absence of meat, than the excess of other nitrogenous foods. To balance our diet with com- binations or articles deficient in fat, we serve beans with fatty meats, butter, oils or pork; bread with nuts or butter; potatoes with oily nuts, vegetable oils, butter, cream or beef; rice with fats, and thus the daily waste of the body is replaced by a very few articles well chosen. There is no end of variety every day in the year, with little anxiety or thought about it, except to bear in mind that we should eat to live and that hunger always calls for the real suhstantials, and not for fancy made dishes and other things containing an excess of waste and that are of no special use. SUMMING UP THE COOKING DEPARTMENT. SPECIAL POINTS FOR MOTHERS. "I have formed a settled conviction that the world is fed too much. Pastries, cakes, hot bread, rich grains, pickles, pepper sauce, salads, tea and coffee are discarded from * my bill of fare,' and I firmly believe that they will be from the recipes of the twentieth century. Entire wheat flour bread, vegetables, fruit, fish, with a very little meat, and water as the chief drink will distill in the alembic of the digestive organs into pure, rich, feverless blood, electric but steady nerves, and brains whose chief delight will be to ' think God's thoughts after Him.* ''—Frances Willard. It is simplicity in healthful living on a mixed diet. The food products are grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and meats. The articles used in their preparation for the table are salt, sugar, butter, cream, milk, and vege- table oils ; and these in as small quantity as possible that we may get the real delicate flavor of food. The food is well and carefully cooked to retain all its flavors and juices. Combinations are few, recipes tested, and none are worthless. To make this dei)artment strictly vegetarian, all one has to do is to substitute water and vegetable oils for milk, cream, and butter. To be a non- flesh eater, avoid the meats, and use animal products and fish if you wish. In this way the book is adapted to all classes of dietists; even the Raw Food eaters and Fruitarians may make their selections from this depart- ment. Many of my vegetarian readers will doubtless question the assertions that meat or fish in moderation are pref- SUMMING UP THE COOKING DEPARTMENT. 109 erable in many cases to the excessive use of animal products. But I speak from the practical experiment and experience of many years in and out of sanitariums, both personal and with my patients and their families. We must bear in mind that the cow and the hen exist under the high pressure process of abnormal stimula- tion that they may produce beyond the normal capacity, and that a portion of their food is of questionable qual- ity. The great majority of cooks use eggs where food would be better without them, healthwise. Milk in some form enters into the majority of made dishes, and the milk many people drink with their hearty meals is surprising, and doubtless the stomach is greatly sur- prised when compelled to manufacture indigestible cheese curds. The labor of preparing food is reduced from four or six hours a day to two or three and less in a small family. Breakfast and supper are almost a cipher so far as prep- aration goes. To vary the dinner menu the once elabo- rate breakfast may be served and with but one regular meal the oft-recurring question, "What shall I get for dinner ?'' will give the cook no trouble, for Xature assert- ing herself knows just what she needs. One will not feel "rushed*' in the morning, and if men must have breakfast it can be so arranged at night that they will have no difficulty in preparing it, while the mother rests, or takes the extra sleep that is so often a necessity. Children are not hungry earl}^ in the morning and should not be coaxed or compelled to eat. If they are going to school put some fruit in the lunch box and they will come home with an appetite for dinner. With no 110 THE ART OF LIVING. cooked sweets within reach there will be no temptation to eat between meals, and entire wheat bread and fruit will satisfy a child for supper, and there is great variety for changes even in a limited meal. If the tea table "looks bare" without the accustomed sweets, then serve this light meal from a tray outside the dining room. The children would enjoy a picnic supper, and even a guest would never miss the usual sweets, if provided with good bread, butter, and fruit. With these improved methods of living, the luncheons, teas, and light refreshments so conspicuous at unseasonable hours and such a menace to health would be entirely set aside, as well as nibbles of dainties and drinks at lunch counters now so preva- lent and enticing to women when shopping. These are strictly modern inventions that appeal to the palate, are patronized by women, and induce destructive habits. '^The Bishop of London, Viscount Peel, and Lady Henry Somerset have recently testified that drunken- ness among English women is increasing at an alarming rate, the number of convictions of London women for intoxication having risen from twenty-five to fifty-one per thousand within a few years. The Bishop of Lon- don says there are many cases among the upper circles of society where husbands have been dragged down to poverty and disgrace by the drunkenness of wives." At the recent convention of the W. C. T. U in Portland, Me., Lady Somerset spoke of the great difficulties of temperance work in England owing to the number of women who are inebriates. She also warned us against "the growing fondness for drink among the women of America." SUMMING UP THE COOKING DEPARTMENT. Ill Eating habits precede the tippling habit, and many women are very thoughtless in these matters, and their own unwise habits are intensified in their children. The artificial appetite created, fed, and encouraged by igno- rance, called love, that denies the child nothing, is the essence of selfishness and criminality ! The child's de- praved palate craves stimulants in food and drink and the gustatory habits of children and youth almost exceed belief, and there seems no limit to the elastic capacity of the juvenile stomach. Every mother should study humane methods for herself, then become, in earnest, a society for the prevention of cruelty to her children I Women have imposed many social burdens and cus- toms upon themselves that demand too great an expendi- ture of brain, muscle, and nerve; and when we use more wise thought and less money in meeting every form of social life we shall have a firmer, friendlier grasp upon the whole world of activities than is at present possible. We indulge the hope that women will sometime set their ideals so high that they will deem it decidedly inhuman and vulgar to provide drinks and dainties for the palate on every possible occasion. We hear of the new woman, but she will remain in her phantom shape until the present woman creates a new order in the Art of Living. Part HI. THOUGHTS LEADING TOWARD PRACTICAL IDEALS. •• If you would not be forgotten as soon you are dead, write things worth read' or do things worth writing," — Franklin. as you are dead, write things worth reading s " Speak clearly if you speak at all. j Carve every word before you let it fall." .{ — Holmes. ^ "Help me to deal very honestly with 1 words as with people, because they are both j alive. Give me an ideal that will stand the ^ strain of weaving into human stuif on the j loom of the real.— Henry J. Van Dyke. I From " The Author's Prayer." PEARLS OF WISDOM. From the Writings of Jos. M. Wade.* 5^ "The greatest of all earthly possessions is a healthy, well-formed body and well-balanced mind; with them come the blessings of earth life." ^ "When thou art told to '^know thyself do not mistake the body for thyself, for the body is but the dwelling place, as it were." ^ "All pleasures are paid for in pain after the pleasure. Wise men experience neither joy nor sorrow, — if we ex- perience one we must experience the other." ^ "That which is necessary for our healthy existence will destroy us if taken in excess." ^"Love thy neighbor as thyself and thy sickness will be of short duration and thy doctor's bill light." 5^ "The earth is a vast bank of deposit from which the inhabitants draw the raw material for their sustenance. But avaricious man is rapidly wasting this substance." *Editor and publisher of " Fibre and Fabric," Boston. lit) THE ART OF LIVING. 5^ "Food is not to be taken because we like it, for that is intemperance, but simply because it is a necessity that we should eat to maintain the animal body, remember- ing that enough is a feast." ^ "When a man finds it necessary to stimulate his diges- tive organs with condiments it is time to give his stomr ach a rest." 5^ "We should never place ourselves in the position to have to cure disease. We should so conduct ourselves that we should prevent it." ^ "No person has the power to save another until he has saved himself." ^ "It costs about seventy-five cents to supply a man with his first dollar bottle of patent medicine ! What does it cost to prepare the patient's body to make it necessary to take it?" 5^ "Thirst is a disease and he who feeds disease is a criminal both in the law of God and man." It 5^ "Many people court disease by continually hashing and rehashing past troubles, imaginary and real." 5^ "The greatest doctor the world has ever produced is the one who keeps his patients well. He is the wisest PEAELS OF WISDOM. 117 patient who takes his doctor's advice, for he then has become his own physician." ^ "Where the stomach is man's god there will we find rich doctors." ^ "Each human being is a law within himself. If he fails to live that law, he inflicts his own punishment and sacrifices what would be his own reward." 5^ "Some people are never happy unless they are mis- erable; hence they get a great deal of comfort out of a very little misery." 5^ "We cannot make good penmanship with either a broken or worn-out pen. This applies to every act in life." 5^ "Enough is always a feast. It is not wise to invite people to dine with us, then insist that they make hogs of themselves." 5^ "In my eating I seek not what is ^nice' but what is necessary to keep the human body in healthy condition- What is ^nice' is often destructive." ^ "It is not a question of what we should eat or when we should eat, but we should never think of eating and never eat until hunger sounds the warning and then eat just what the system requires, and no more, regardless 118 THE ART OF LIVING. of a depraved taste. He who over-persuades the appe- tite will pay the penalty." ^ "The body of man is the temple of God. The soul is the doorway through which the spirit enters, hence we must live a clean life." ^ "The spirit never grows old, and in the proper temple it is old in the young, and young in the old body." ^ "If your life is worth preserving on this earth it will be preserved until your work is done." 5^ "Disease cannot enter the human temple unless igno- rance opens the door.'' ^ "Ignorance is the cause of every crime, ever}' ailment, every trouble that flesh is heir to and yet man will ever persist in and even glory in being ignorant." ^ " ^There is no new thing under the sun,' and the find- ing anything new to us is evidence that we are evo- luting out of ignorance." ^ "There is only one way to reform the world and that is for each and every one to begin by reforming them- selves, — which will prove a life work to the best of peo- ple, — and thus bring up their families properly. Begin at home and make sure at least of one individual tlu\t is all right, for he who conquers self has conquered the world." PEARLS OF WISDOM. 119 ^"He who knows his own body ceases to abuse that body and will use it as well as he would any other ani- mal in which he has an interest. If men and women could know how they abuse the temple in which they dwell they would stand aghast and make a sharp turn to the higher life. Should they see a horse abused as badly as they abuse their own animal bodies, they would quickly call the humane society to protect the animals." 5^ "To feed thirst is an unnecessary expense, while the punishment for creating thirst comes in the expense of impaired health and doctor's bills. When I speak of thirst I mean that no liquid of any kind is necessary to be taken between meals. I never take it, no matter what the weather may be, and am one of the most active busi- ness men living. I have no whims, but am describing a natural condition in which I live and in which others can live." ^ "Parents who have cultivated an artificial fire in their stomachs and try to drown it with liquids, will encour- age the same condition in their children. Perhaps ninety-nine per cent, of our people are habitual crimi- nals against natural law in pandering to stomach desire which in their weakness they have allowed to get into a demoralized condition." EDUCATORS *From Horace Fletcher's "• Glutton or Epicure." ^ "Appetite should be dignified and recognized as a dis- tinct sense." ^ "Study Normal Appetite and heed its invitation. It prescribes wisely." ^ "All that nature requires of man is to supply fuel pre- ferred, and therefore prescribed, by Normal Appetite." 5^ "Nature requires no sacrifices and imposes no penal- ties for obeying her beneficent demands." ^ "The old physiology presupposed disease and glorified pathology." ^ "The new physiology studies Hygiene and assists Nature by securing Prevention to avoid the necessity of correction and cure." 5^ "Taste is an evidence of nutrition. While taste lasts a necessary process is going on. Taste should therefore be carefully studied and understood." ♦Author of several books published by Herbert S. Stone & Co., Chicago. EDUCATORS. 1^1 5^ "Unless a person have a pressing engagement with his own funeral, what sense is there in hurrying with his meals ?" ^ "Gluttony imposes upon the body a quantity of matter which is underdone ; that is under-prepared ; so that only a small portion of it is fitted for assimilation, leaving the greater part to ferment within the alimentary canal/' 5^ "One month of study of Nature's first principle of life—nutrition— will convert a pitiable glutton into an intelligent epicurean." 5^ "An indigestible morsel of food is like a runaway team in a crowded street." ^ "Individuals differ greatly in the quantity of the sup- ply of the juices of the mouth which are active in saliva- tion; so much so, that it is safe to say that no two have equal provision." id .- 'One person may dispose of a morsel of bread in thirty mastications, so that the last vestige of it has disap- peared by involuntary process into the stomach. An- other may require fifty acts of mastication before the morsel has disappeared." S^"If we masticate— submit to vigorous jaw action- all food we take into the mouth, liquid as well as solid, until the nutritive part of it disappears into the stomach 122 THE ART OF LIVING. through compulsory or involuntary swallowing, and re- move from the mouth all fibrous, insoluble and tasteless remainder, we will take into the body, thereby, only that which is good for the body." « ^ "If we can devote ten thousand actions of the jaw daily to senseless or vicious gossip, what sense is there in denying adequate jaw service to the most important function of nutrition?" ^ "Observation proves that you cannot get more starchy nutriment into assimilation than salivation prepares, gulp though you may, but you can take in a load of dis- ease possibilities in trying to enforce or evade proper salivation." •* ^ "The message or warning which taste gives in connec- tion with eating is that while any taste is left in a mouthful of food in process of mastication or sucking, it is not yet in a condition to be passed on to the stom- ach; and what remains after taste has ceased is not fit for the stomach." ^ "If the herein alleged functions of the sense of taste are true the discovery will revolutionize all current ideas about life and health possibilities and reorganize econo- mies of food supply and woman's work on a basis of saving at least two thirds of the present waste. It will be found that the actual pleasure of eating derived there- from will be greatly increased and that the effect on health will be good and immediate.'' EDUCATORS. 123 ^ "Take away the dietary causes of disease and Nature will immediately begin to repair damages and build a more perfect structure." ^ "Right eating and right food are, then, very impor- tant considerations of health as far as the tissues are concerned; and as the tissues are themselves the stored fuel or food of the brain and the nerve centers, the im- portance of perfect nutrition extends to the most vital functions and interests of life." SOCIAL CHATS WITH MY FRIENDS, THE YOUNG HOMEMAKERS. Building and Fuhnishixg the Home. If one has the choice of selection for a location, let it be npon high ground where the drainage will be good. Locate the house so that the sun will reach every room at some time during the day, and if possible have a small sun parlor with a glass roof in the upper story. The expense will not be great, and the comfort and luxury of it will be appreciated by all. For ventilation, every window should open easily at the top and bottom unless one can afford more expensive methods. Sleeping rooms should be light and have hard wood floors; be plainly and harmoniously furnished, without carpets, draperies and bric-a-brac; a few pictures on the walls, ornaments that are easily kept clean, and as few rugs as possible. A large closet for each room with plenty of hooks, a shelf above the hooks, and two or three drawers, is quite as indispensable as a window. Bath room and plumb- ing should be of the best; the living rooms sunny, fur- nished for comfort, and floors finished in such a manner that one can walk safely over them. There will be no closed, musty rooms in a model home. The library, if there is one, should contain a cabinet for curios, relics, and small treasures instead of having them all over the house to be daily cared for. Heavy draperies for win- dows and doors should go out of fashion, except in rooms little usedj and window shutters are an invitation to SOCIAL CHATS. 125 sunless rooms; flood the rooms with sunshine, and re- member the human plants as well as the window plants. The dining room should be light and cheerful in tints and colors, restful pictures upon the walls, and hard wood floors not too highly polished. A few plants in the windows, spotless linen, no matter how plain, china and silver according to one's means, easy, straight-backed chairs, well prepared food and a cheerful family, — what more is necessary for comfort? If the room is used for other purposes, cover the table — if you keep it set — with something impervious to dust. A roomy china closet and drawers for table linen are indispensable. The kitchen should be a pleasant room of medium size, so constructed and situated as to save all the work and steps possible. The sink and stove should be high enough to enable one to work with ease without stoop- ing. The pantry should be large enough to hold all cooking utensils, and light enough to do all necessary work. It should have an inclosure for flour, and drawers for kitchen linen and other essential things. Drawers lined with non-absorbent material would be ex- cellent for bread and food that needs to be kept fresh, and would be less care than bread boxes or Jars. Every cupboard should be concealed with doors — a lower sec- tion for large utensils and other necessities, above them shelves no higher than one can reach — and when closed everything is protected from dust, flies, mice, and in- sects. The pantry is thus a practical room, and the dreaded semi-yearly cleaning is nearly abolished by daily order and care. The cellar should be airy and have cemented walls 126 THE ART OF LIVING. and floors, and be well provided with cupboards^. With snch a cellar there will be no excuse for dirt, rubbish, foul air and death traps concealed therein. Eooms for wood and coal should be on a level with the kitchen, go that one can get them without going up and down two or three steps many times a day. The modern house is heated by hot air, steam, or elec- tricity. The heating should extend to every room in the house, even to the kitchen, as this would economize fuel and work, and one would be able to use gas, gasoline, or kerosene even in winter, and a stove as a convenience now and then until electricity comes into more general use. SANITATION IN THE HOME. " Cleanliness is next to Godliness." ^ Eternal vigilance is the price of order, purity, health, and happiness in the home. ^ Fruits, foods, drink or medicine should not be used if exposed to the air of an invalid's room. All dishes should be washed by themselves. Leave nothing odor- ous or unsightly exposed, and keep the air pure with dis- infectants, not forgetting outside air and sunlight, the best of purifiers. Charcoal and fresh lime are excellent, and there are many odorless disinfectants. ^ Fresh water standing in bowl or pitcher is an excel- lent disinfectant, but it must not be used after absorb- ing odors, neither drunk after standing in a sleeping room over night. * ^ Do not use for cooking or drinking the first water drawn from the pipes in the morning, neither water that has stood in the teakettle over night. ^ Pour hot water down the sink every day and twice a week a strong solution of sal soda in a gallon of hot water. 5^ To fumigate a room, put a few red hot coals in an empty coal hod or iron kettle and sprinkle a little sul- 128 THE ART OF LIVING. phur over them ; set it in the room and let it remain for several hours, with the doors and windows closed. This should often be done in lodging houses, and in rooms where smokers enjoy themselves. « ^ Keep kerosene stoves and lamps clean and burners bright ; they will then be odorless. In reading have the light back of you, plenty of air in the room, and never turn the wick partly down and leave it burning to poison the air. ^ Keep food covered and in a cool place. It is a waste to leave it standing exposed to dust and odors. Milk, cream, butter, meat, and cooked fruit are all sensitive and soon spoil or become unfit for the table. ^ Instead of drinking ice water, put water in glass jars or bottles and cool in the refrigerator. 5^ Look so carefully and so often into the condition of the wood box, the sink and under it, under the refrigera- tor and inside of it, the corners of cupboards, bread and cake boxes, that no death traps be therein concealed. Water-closets, sinks, cesspools, drains, and cellars need special attention at all times. 5^ There is death concealed in many a kiss given to infants and young children. Lip-kissing by those who use tobacco or are diseased is decidedly unsanitary. SANITATION IN THE HOME. 1^9 Greeting with a kiss, especially in public places, should become obsolete. 5^ Fruits and meats that have been kept on ice spoil more rapidly than those which have not been on the ice. Look over baskets of soft fruit, remove the decayed, then spread on plates and set in a cool place. 5^ Vegetables uncovered in the refrigerator will spoil the taste of milk and butter. 5^ Drink with the lips inside the cup or glass if obliged to drink after another. Provide your own cup in trav- eling, and drink as little as possible when on a journey, and never feed a child with your spoon. 5^ The deadly germ is found in many a dishcloth and sink brush, and only cremation will destroy it. 5i When diphtheria, typhoid fever, and malaria abound, look carefully over your own personal temple, then make a search of the house inside and out ; then it will be wise to look after the environments of the milkman. 5^ Permit no collection of rubbish near the house, and pld tin cans, bottles, broken dishes, boxes and barrels and any other old, worthless thing are not ornamental in the backvard. 130 THE ART OF LIVING. 5^ Did you ever open the door to a sleeping room, and close it without entering, or hold your breath while opening a window ? Ventilate during the night. 5^ Did you ever call on an invalid, and find the room so hot and close that you could not sit down, and took your departure as soon as courtesy would permit ? Speak a humane word. •* ^ The physician to the Czar of Eussia visited him on his deathbed, which was surrounded by the Czarina and other members of the family. On entering the room he ignored the presence of the exalted individuals, and loudly demanded air, remarking in tones of deep an- guish, "What an atmosphere ! It is disease-breeding. And in this air you allow Eussia's little father to lie !" And then, without more ado, he roughly tore down the curtains and opened windows. ^ If one would enjoy refreshing sleep with no danger of disturbing others, then each one, from the infant to the centenarian, should occupy crib, cot, couch, or bed by one's self. This is the sanitary and healthful de- mand. All girls and boys like their own bed, their own things, and, if possible, their own room, and this feeling of ownership will induce to lifelong habits of neatness and order ; and the parents should see that good ventilation is secured at all times. Youth and age should not occupy the same bed, neither the sick and the well, and these points cannot be too strongly emphasized. The emanations from body and breath are often the SAKITATI02f IN THE HOME. 131 cause of illness, and create that tired, exhausted feeling so common in the morning. Many a wife has become a nervous wreck by living, and especially sleep- ing, with a tobacco-saturated husband. Because people marry is no reason why as a bride the girl should give .up her "own room," or the groom share it with her. We are dependent one upon the other, but are becoming' more individualized, and the idea of ownership is being supplanted by comradeship and companionship. In these modern days of improvement if they each occupy separate beds or apartments, the outside world will not consider them victims for the divorce courts. ^ Has it ever occurred to you that the very walls, ceil- ings, draperies, and bedding become saturated with the emanations from the bodies of the constant occupants? Even the thoughts they think, the words they speak, the deeds they do, all contribute to the invisible substance in their rooms. ^ There are people so sensitive they cannot sleep in certain rooms or beds, although there seems no visible reason why they should not. They are not "whimsical,'^ nor given to "notions," but have such a development of spiritual sense they feel things that others fail to recog- nize. "Unfortunate," you may say, but the farther we grow away from the crude and gross the more the higher sense becomes developed, and toward this the race is advancing. ^ Every member of the family should use his or her 132 THE ART OF LIVING. own towel, and children should be taught that diseases may be communicated through the promiscuous use of towels. * ^ Towels and handkerchiefs used by persons having skin, e3^e, nasal, or special ailments should be put dry into a kettle of cold water with plenty of soap, a table- spoonful or more of kerosene and boiled until perfectly clean — the germs killed. They may then be scalded in clean water, well rinsed, and dried in the sun. The less bluing used in any clothing the better. ^ Every one should have his or her own brush and comb, and, as a rule, be as careful about using another's as about using a toothbrush. Keep all toilet articles clean with ammonia or soda water and away from dust. ^If choice lies between a handsome carpet and a good mattress, choose the mattress. We get our rest for the coming day's work while in bed and it should be com- fortable. After a few 3^ears' service have it made over, and it will be as good as new if the material is good. Keep the bed clothing clean, and when airing never allow it to sweep the floor and gather dust. ^ Use a wet finger or sponge for sealing and putting on letter stamps. The mouth is not the place to hold money, and in counting bills use a damp sponge for the fingers, and wash the hands after handling money. One SANITATION" IK THE HOME. 133 cannot be too careful in this matter in opening a large mail and taking money from letters. 5^ If you would have the atmosphere pure about you^ don't have too many cats and dogs in the house. They sometimes bring diseases to the children, and should never be kissed by them, for it is uncertain in what com- pany they have been. Above all things feed them on clean dishes of their own, and train them to keep out of the dining room and out of the cook's way. ^ The value of fresh air from attic to cellar, sunlight, disinfectants, and fumigation cannot be overestimated as means of sanitation and health in the home and everywhere we congregate or travel. ^ Another thing is thought sanitation. Above all things remember that fear-thought and worry-thought — twin monstrosities of the ancient father Heredity and his numerous offspring — are more deadly than work. Too many of us live in the atmosphere of "afraid." We fear to do this or that, and are afraid of things that never happen. We fret and worry over matters we fear may not turn out just right, or that never "come to pass." Suppose they do come — has the worry done the least good ? No, but it has opened the door wider and wider each hour to admit worry thoughts sent out by others that are sure to call at the first invitation, and take up their abode with your thoughts. They are like "tramps," who, if not repulsed at your door, give the signal that 134 THE ART OF LIVING. brings others to the same place, and sets you to wonder- ing how it happens that 3'ou are the favored one. But it is no happening. There are no accidents in this world, for it is a world of order and conservation of power by concentration of effort for the accomplishment of a pur- pose with a lesson of wisdom for us to discover. But how weak or strong the purpose depends upon the indi- vidual sending out the invisible lines of thought. That this has much to do with the Art of Living in its phys- ical and spiritual sense no one will dispute. If we think unclean, unkind thoughts of another, thoughts of envy, hate, jealousy, and all manner of evil, they are a means of infection to ourselves through the power of attraction.. Many a mother has killed her babe because of thoughts that poisoned its dinner. Grief and anger are deadly; joy and love bless and expand. The great negative world of ill health, misery and wretchedness, envy, hatred and mischief-making gossip is mingled with the great positive world of health and power, of goodness and love, of hope and cheer and life, and it is for us to say what shall be our contribution to this invisible thought world and what we shall invite from it to abide with us. The youth should be taught that the spirit of the words we speak, the thoughts we think, be they pure or impure, float out into space meeting others of the same nature on their way. They go forth to bless or curse, to purify or make unclean, to touch with inspira- tion's pen that which uplifts the race, or feed the flame that downward tends. THE COOK STOVE AND THE FIRE. There is nothing more troublesome to a cook than a stove oven with uncertain qualities for baking. Hav- ing a good stove, keep the inside mechanism clean, top and bottom, under side of covers, and ashes emptied daily. A good stove or range, with care, will last almost indefinitely, while a poor one with careless treatment will be useless in a few years. A stove well polished twice a year will retain its luster, except upon the top, and many prefer a daily washing with soapsuds, with only an occasional blacking. To make a fire, open the drafts, put the lightest kindling material in the bottom of fire box, over that a little heavier material, then light it with a match, and in a few moments a little larger wood, or two or three shovels of coal at a time may be carefully added to the fire; and when well started, close the oven damper, and if you wish to heat the oven leave the drafts open, but save the fuel by closing them when little heat is re- quired. With this care you may expect a good fire to give a well prepared oven for baking. If you burn wood, the fire must be carefully attended to and not allowed to get low when food is ready for the oven nor when it is half done. Lay the wood loosely on the fire ; do not jar the stove when putting it in, nor close the oven doors with a bang when baking. Dough when rising is very sensitive and often falls through careless treatment. 136 THE ART OF LIVING. Keep the lower part of the fire box well cleaned of ashes and cinders, as heat is generated from below; re- plenish carefully with a little coal now and then instead of a large quantity at one time ; too much does no good, and warps and ruins the stove. If a coal fire gets low, use a little wood before replen- ishing with coal. Empty and wash the reservoir once a week, and do not take water from it for cooking pur- poses. Keep the teakettle clean inside and outside and full of water when cooking. The heavy stove ware should not be kept under the sink. Have unbreakable pans and dishes, strong spoons, steel knives and two- tined forks to use about the stove and in cooking, as it is poor economy to use china and silver about the kitchen work. SAVE THE BODY AND USE THE BRAIN. A great necessity in every home is a clear, active brain in a healthy body, that can plan work and execute it with the least labor and the fewest steps. Many peo- ple go about their work in an aimless sort of way with- out a plan, and never seem to think of but one thing at a time. Hence many false moves are made, thousands of steps taken amounting to miles of needless travel, just for want of thought and plan that should precede action. The housewife should conserve her energies in ever}'' way, learn to save and not make needless work for herself; then she may execute with skill and without friction. If about to bake, get everything so near at hand that you have only to reach out or turn around to get what you need for the article being made. Make the same dish and spoon useful for several things if you have much to cook. Have plenty of wood or coal and hot and cold water at hand before you begin to cook. Clean holders and towels are also a necessity to use about the stove. Asbestos mats and paper are durable and will prevent food from burning. Sit down all you can while at work; there are many things we do while standing, when if sitting in a chair of suitable height with a rest for the feet would relieve weary muscles. If obliged to work in one position until nerves and muscles remind you of weariness, heed their voice and relieve the tension by a rest of a few moments, or by going to the 138 THE ART OF LIVING. door, breathing slowly and deepl}^ and passively shaking ■every nerve, muscle, and joint into harmony. Do not fret and worry over the mistakes you may have made, because there is a right and perfect way and you will find it. The kitchen should be orderly enough to admit a vis- itor at any reasonable hour, and the queen therein should be tidy at all times even in a five cent print. Why not be as neatly clad for her work as is one in any other profession? Why not feel the dignity of her position as much as if she were a teacher ? The worker imparts dignity to and makes honorable the work, no matter what it may be, if conducted with care and personal interest. Dress according to your occupation. To protect dress, hands, and hair wear a large apron, loose gloves and cap when necessary. There is no excuse for unrepaired shoes or other clothing, no excuse for skirts that touch the floor at every step and compel you to lift them in going upstairs. The time has been when one was deemed almost unsexed in a short skirt, but that day is away in the past, and women nowadays are not only telling what they would like for ease and comfort but are doing what seems best in that direction. And it is best to wear skirts to the tops of the boots, at least in all work about the house and in tlie garden, as well as on the wheel and mountain excursions. The change in length of skirts will produce freedom of body and soul that every woman will appreciate. It is a great accom- plishment to have a place for everything and everything in its place. Then work will be done without hurry or worry, and with the least possible noise. With dis- SAVE THE BODY AND USE THE BEAIN. 139 order, confusion, untidiness and a lack of plan, nothing is ^^on time,^^ the housewife absorbs the conditions she creates, and the house is merely a shelter without a serene, practical soul that makes it a true liome. WHAT SHALL WE DO? The cooking department of domestic life has become so burdensome in many homes that entire families have adopted boarding house or hotel life, and thus reduce the expense and care of having a cook. If ever the plans of co-operative domestic organization ^practically mate- rialize, this will be a way out for many, especially those who are dependent upon three elaborate meals a day. But there are thousands of families who have already reduced their table service to such simplicity that but one full meal is in daily demand, and this custom is rap- idly increasing. This one meal is composed of the sub- stantial foods that are necessary to keep the human temple in the best condition. Pursuing this plan it is not necessary to pay special attention to a certain line of food, neither do penance to keep in the best of health. The regulation cook is now dispensed with in many a home where she has been a necessity. The question is often asked, Shall we teach our boys as well as our girls to cook and do housework? Cer- tainly this should be done if possible. Every boy and girl of fourteen years should learn to make and bake good bread of all kinds, prepare, cook and serve a nutri- tious dinner, and these should be regarded as praise- worthy accomplishments. This knowing how to do things makes them independent at all times, and the}^ are never at a disadvantage when thrown upon their own resources WHAT SHALL WE DO ? 141 for food supplies and their preparation, for they should be as competent to select and purchase as to cook and serve. The vexed servant question will remain an un- solved problem so long as the housewife is at the mercyof an irresponsible cook, and we shall be surrounded by un- desirable and vicious social and physical conditions so long as the food for humanity is manipulated by the prevailing type of kitchen queen. The future cook will be an educated person, imparting dignity to a vocation which will be considered as respectable as it is respon- sible. Her office will be quite as exalted as though she were engaged in law, politics, art, music or the ministry. And why not, when we realize that she occupies the most responsible position in our homes, and that upon the food she prepares depends the "weal or woe" of homes and nations ? Our physical, moral, and social health is dependent upon what and how we eat and drink; hence the presiding genius in the laboratory of the home should be a specimen of health and good nature, care, prudence, judgment and with a reliable conscience. Then health, strength, and plump, rosy-cheeked children will be quite the fashion, nerves quivering upon the outside will be duly clothed with substantial flesh, and "T am so nerv- ous" will be heard no more. The following words from the pen of the brilliant Kate Field, taken from an address to a class of girl grad- uates, may be an inspiration to other girls : — "Cooking is the alphabet of your happiness. I do not hesitate to affirm that this great Eepublic, great as her necessities may be in many directions, needs cooks more than all else. The salvation of the national stom- 142 THE ART OF LIVING. aeh depends upon them. We are a nation of dyspeptics because we eat the wrong foods, badly cooked, and be- cause our women do not know the rudiments of their business and resign their kitchens into the hands of in- competent servants of whom they are afraid. Be cooks first and anything you please afterwards." THE CARE OF FOOD. Food that is left from a meal should be put away in clean dishes. If there are whole slices of bread, lay them firmly together and they will keep fresh. Keep all food away from heat, light, and dust, and never leave anything exposed in the pantry or elsewhere to invite insects, the action of germs, or the absorption of odors. The flavor of food is very easily deteriorated in this way. Look closely into the condition of bread and cake boxes, wash and scald them often, and allow no crumbs and pieces to mould, as they will very quickly in hot weather. To freshen rolls, biscuit or gems, dip in cold water, put in a pan, cover with another pan, and set in the oven to heat through. To freshen bread when two or three days old, put the whole loaf into the steamer and steam through, or dip in cold water, put in the bread pan, cover with another pan, and stand in the oven until heated through; either way the bread is like new. If you have half slices of bread, biscuit, gems or bread of any kind, toast it crispy in the oven, grind in the food chopper, then you have "rusk'' or "granola" equal in nutrition to any you can buy. CLEARING THE TABLE AND DISH WASHING. After the food has been removed and cared for, pick up the dishes and free them from all remnants of food, and pile them np in an orderly manner ready for wash- ing. Brush the table, and, if you keep it set all the time, put everything in its proper place, and be sure that all are clean. Prepare your pan of hot water with a little ammonia or soap, and wash, rinse, and wipe the glass and silver with clean linen free from lint. Handle all dishes with care if you expect them to do good serv- ice. Next wash cups and saucers, small dishes, plates, etc., using more soap if necessary and change the water if there are many dishes. Einse in hot water by setting them in a pan in such a way that the inside of all will be rinsed, or dip them in hot water and put in a drainer over which a clean towel has been spread. Tea and coffee pots if used should be well washed by themselves, rinsed with hot water and dried. . All kitchen utensils should be washed and rinsed with as much care as the china, using different dish mops and towels for them. Wash, scald, and dry in the sun, if possible, all dish- cloths, mops and towels. These things tilled with deadly microbes have been the cause of fevers and death. ECONOMY IN THE FOOD SUPPLIES. The struggle for existence has always been a problem, and in these later years when combines and trusts of many kinds are thrust upon us, resulting in strikes, mobs, violence, and poverty, the solution of the problem becomes a serious matter. But when everything takes a bound upward in price we need not be alarmed. We can afford to live and live well if only we learn how, no matter what prices rule the market. Take a careful in- ventory of former supplies and see how many eggs, how many pounds of sugar, and butter, how much sweet food, spices, milk, tea, coffee, cocoa, and chocolate can be dispensed with. Perhaps also tobacco, cigars, drinks, ices, bakery trifles, and drugs may be among the list. '^But nothing is left when these are taken away," you exclaim. "Life would not be worth living." Let us look into the matter. The above mentioned things are mostly additions to the family wants, that to a really temperate liver — one who has studied the Art of Living not for the economy of it but to live — are deemed superfluous. Let us see what there is left : meat, vegetables, fruits and grains, all substantial nutrients and when in suitable combination what more do we need? Even meat may be entirely dispensed with, or, if not, economy will make one dollar go as far as two or three dollars formerly did. A small piece of meat will 146 ECONOMY IN^ THE FOOD SUPPLIES. give flavor to food and the fiber is then worthless. No- substitutes need be sought should such change be made. Corn, wheat, oats, beans, peas, and other vegetables would be ample in variety for daily changes even with- out fresh fruits, which are more expensive in every way than anything except meat, as there is nothing but the juice of them fit for the stomach, and taste calls for that only for the flavor. Economy will purchase figs, dates, prunes, raisins, that furnish their own sugar, are very nutritious, and if too sweet lemon juice will make a salad of them. In them are the saving of made des- serts and, used as a first course, there would be no temp- tation to overeat or even to call for them very often. The expense would be but a mere trifle as compared with former desserts, even with a few nuts, if meat was not eaten. Economy would purchase flour by the barrel or half barrel, and cereals in bulk at three or four cents a pound instead of gilt-edged packages costing three or four times as much per pound. In a large family or even a small one in cold weather the vegetable supplies- of standard kinds would be purchased by the busheL Fortunes are squandered by habits of waste in purchas- ing the necessities of life. Economy for health's sake drinks nature's own aqua without additions. When this pure, sparkling liquid requires coloring it should be for medicinal uses. Milk is not necessary except for young children without teeth. When cutting down the super- fluous expense of food supplies, do not forget the saving in fuel, and woman's work. Each of these items will also be greatly diminished when you have learned that the greatest economy healthwise is to so make practical ECONOMY IN THE FOOD SUPPLIES. 147 the Art of Living that the first and third meals of the day will be reduced to a cipher, or to bread and fruit, and but one good, substantial meal a day is to be cooked and eaten. It must be remembered that in many families suffi- cient is wasted to feed from one to three persons during a year, from being spoiled in cooking, thrown away after a meal, or fed to an army of cats and dogs that the poor always have with them. It is a little leakage here and there that depletes the family purse and causes poverty and hard times where plenty should abound. DRINKS. Pure water is the universal beverage of all creation except man — he alone improves(?) by coloring and flavoring it. Tea and coffee are medicines and no more necessary than wine, whisky, or champagne. But there is great fascination surrounding the tea and coffee pot, and the man who takes his morning dram to brace him- self for his daily toil is just as logical as the man or woman who takes tea or coffee for the same purpose. Many people declare they are "so faint" or "good for nothing" that it is impossible to do a good day's work, to prepare a sermon, a lecture, or address an audience except under the lash of a strong cup of their favorite beverage. They are proceeding along the same path the dram drinker goes, but one bears the stamp of respect- ability, while in the other it is called a vice. It is no wonder there is an increasing army of tea and coffee inebriates, and that children are born delicate and nerv- ous when these things form a part of the soil in which they are grown. We need not marvel that panaceas with an alcoholic base, and narcotics and stimulants are plentiful upon the dressing tables of hosts of nerve- shattered women. And these things will continue so long as we drink poisoned water, and deluge luscious fruits with wine, beer, brandy, rum and gin from a wine- glassful to a quart; even watermelon is not considered complete by some writers without a glass of wine being DEIl^KS. 149 added to it just before serving. Under the head of ^^safe summer delicacies" we also find a quart of the best brandy or Jamaica rum to be added to a quart of fruit juice. We read of a delicate tea cake baked and then "all the brandy poured over it that it will absorb.'' And these recipes and thousands more of like color are found in popular magazines and papers, otherwise of the best quality, that enter our homes every year. Saloons and other gilded palaces will be necessary until we strike at the root of the tree in our own homes at the family table; then we may expect "a white life for two." SUNDAY DINNERS. "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." A day of rest, recuperation of body and soul after the six days of toil. Custom has made it anything but a day of rest, and to many it is the most wearisome day in the week. But this need not be if only our good sense would come to the rescue. Most people have their meals on Sunday out of the regular order, and this is responsible for many a headache and "blue Monday.^' Many people are only at home to dinner on Sunday and they feel like stuffing themselves with extras. Nuts, pop- corn, sweetmeats, fruits, and candy are indulged in by frequent nibbles through the day. The late breakfast is followed by a big dinner in the middle of the after- noon. The "fatted calf" is brought forth in various tempting forms and the god Gluttony reigns on Sunday if on no other day in the week. A late supper or visit to the pantry completes the Sunday feeding that is such a luxury (?). No matter about subsequent ill feelings or temper all awry, the process will be repeated and relief obtained by doses of "sure cures," until there comes a time when even these much vaunted panaceas become powerless. "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God ? If any man defile the temple of God him shall God destroy, for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are." Can anything be more plain, and is anything more true, than that if the human temple is abused, it is destroyed SUJS^DAY DINKEKS 151 before its time through disobedience to the law of con- servation? Give a little heed to physical and spiritual health, morals and growth on Sunday, and it will be much easier to obey the law of living through the week. If one expects to be spiritually benefited by the inspira- tion of a sermon, let him bear in mind that no matter how grand the sermon may be on paper, the minister in the pulpit must receive inspiration from the Divine within those in the pews to render his words effective. No additional power can be received if the hearers sit there with a workingman' s dinner of pork, beans, brown bread, coffee and other et ceteras stored away in their anatomy, while they wink and pinch themselves to keep awake. Let us be humane to ourselves. Take the lightest possible breakfast, if any, on Sunday, have a good dinner as near the usual hour as possible, but cook all or nearly all of it on Saturday. There are plenty of foods that, if unseasoned, will be just as good warmed and seasoned if cooked the previous day. A still easier plan would be to live on bread and fruits or make the day one of fasting, which would be far better than unwise feasting. These methods are observed in many homes, and Sunday is really made a day of rest for all; a day to become more thoroughly acquainted with one's family and come in closer touch and tune with the Infinite, and thus take another step in the true Art of Living. COURTESY AT HOME. "There is nothing within a man's sphere that costs so little and brings such large returns as the words ' Thank you.' " — Wade. Where the Art of Living prevails there will be due consideration for each member of the home; courtesy will be shown to all, even the helpers will be treated with respect. Children carry into the outside world their impressions of home. Obedience must be maintained if one expects order and system, and the woman at the helm is wise if she can secure it without friction. She will neither criticise nor correct except in private unless obliged to do so, and never before children. Home will be so attractive that children will not go astray, neither be in haste to leave it and establish one of their own. Each room will bear its own special charm, and the mother will not say, "It does not matter what room John has, he is only a boy." But "only a boy" is the embryo man with surprising possibilities for greatness and goodness, even gentle care and protection for you, mothers. And "only a girl" is the "miniature woman" to grow and fill the place she makes for herself, and the "two shall be one" that in due time will create men and women from the web of their lives. The innocent babe in your arms from this moment is unconsciously pre- paring for the continuation of the race. A wise mother will see that the elements for making the best of soil are woven into the child's life, and when he steps out into the world alone he will know how to live and what life means. THE PERILS IN FAT AND HOW TO DISPOSE OF IT. Thousands of people are too fat and a great burden to themselves; and, besides, they are like an almost shapeless mass of clay. This "fat" is sometimes bloat, gas, or soft, spongy material, instead of real solid fat that fills every cell. Think of it, — carrying around from three to five inches of solid fat in the outside covering of the framework of the temple, and every organ inside completely smothered with this surplus! No wonder such people are "so short-breathed" that they puff and pant and blow upon little extra exertion! For several years this surplus burden has been accumulating, and how to get rid of it is the question. It is a kind of pre- digested food, and is "all ready for absorption" just as soon as you cease its accumulation, and when you have lived upon this food for a month or two, or until from fifty to one hundred pounds of it has disappeared, you will have learned the Art of Living to avoid such accu- mulations in the future. The easiest and safest possible way to reduce the body to its former graceful and symmetrical proportions is to begin the work by omitting the breakfast for a week or two, lessening the supper until you can easily dispense with that. By this time the burden will have become lighter, and it will be little discomfort to forget the dinner for a few days at a time or weeks if need be until 154 THE ART OF LIVING. the desired point is reached. During this time sat- isfy thirst with plain water, or flavor it with fruit juice now and then without sugar. Do whatever you feel inclined to do. Work, walk, ride, rest, sleep or any reasonable thing may be indulged, and if you have never read anything upon this subject do so now, and you may in this way be doing home missionary work in the com- mon sense method of living and working out one's own salvation. There is no work or worry in this simple method over what you shall do, what you shall eat, drink, or take, but there may be a little expense involved in remodeling the clothing to fit the new person, when the new temple is complete. WORK AND DUTY. "How can I get up and do the day's work that lies before me?" The weary eyelids open, suddenly the "must do it" comes to the front, the soul is aroused and the work is done. And thus day after day, year after jear, the routine work goes on, until there comes a day when "must do" is powerless and "As thy day is so shall thy strength be" stands for naught, and the soul lays aside the old garment for the new. Work and duty are common to all. We think we are living when we crowd the work of two days into one in the line of duty, labor, or pleasure; when we strain every nerve and muscle to the utmost limit after something to gratify our desire for anything that appeals to us. After all, what are these things we struggle after, that perhaps cost the body five years of service in two, to say nothing of the crushing weight upon the aspiring soul ? What is duty ? Some- thing we owe to self or to other selves? How many there are who consider it their duty to work for others until life holds nothing for them hardly worth an effort io continue it ! They perhaps leave a lucrative business, or refuse to retain a hard-earned position that they may care for some one, when another educated for and need- ing the position could fill it as well or better than they. Faithful souls going down to physical death under the mistaken idea of duty to others, that abuses self and sets aside their own aspirations and ideals that tend to com- pleteness of life. To your own spirit be true, and do the work that is yours, for none can do it as well. BRIEF REFRESHMENTS FOR LEISURE MOMENTS. "Be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams — the more they are condensed the deeper they burn."— Southey. ^ Sickness is man's invention, and a most undesirable and profitless expense to himself in every way. ^ The learned professions live and thrive financially upon the sins, miseries, and ill health of the race. 5^ Look at life as we may, and think how independent we are, yet we employ other people to take care of our bodies when we should do it ourselves. 5^ "Heart failure'' is a much abused phrase ; "stomach failure" would be a more correct verdict. S^ Thousands of people supply our artificial wants — not needs — in various ways and to them we ascribe much of the ill health and untimely death of those whom they serve. 5^ Men display scientific sense in feeding their cattle and other stock, for the death of fine animals means finan- cial loss. BEIEF KEFRESHMEKTS FOK LEISURE MOMEis"TS. 157 ^Were a financial value set upon the human animal we might realize the importance of scientifically feeding our offspring. We call them priceless, yet they come up "haphazard," eat when they please, and if appetite fails, the mother coaxes and indulges to a still further de- structive end. ^ The human race are more unjust, unkind, inhuman to themselves than to any other living creature. ^ The human animal is a great scavenger. He con- sumes everything good, bad and indifferent, after being doctored in some mysterious way for his eating. The lower he is the more crude his tastes. The more civilized the more refined in that direction, and nothing that money or service can purchase is denied him. ^ The lower animals refuse and pass by the things that man will eat, chew and drink. Indeed, instinct in them often appears superior to reason in man. ^ We shall need doctors to prescribe for us, just as long as we cook from the instructions given in papers and magazines of all classes, and the cookbooks that flood the literary world to-day. They are an invitation to expense, labor, nerve-wearing worry, and an inducement to stuff the stomach, and later send for the doctor to be relieved of the results of the stuffing process. 158 THE ART OF LIVING. ^ Common sense cooking recipes rarely appeal to the vitiated taste of those who daily demand something new. ^ The best natured families are those fed upon plain,, wholesome food. Even the thought of "poor health"' cannot find standing room in such a family. 5^ If children are cross, fretful, half sick, and out of school with headaches and weariness, try the change of health-producing food at regular intervals only when hungry. 5^ My sympathies extend to those who think they must prepare cold weather foods and enticing cooling dainties in hot weather. 5^ Who are the victims of sunstrokes, summer ailings, and various forms of sudden deaths ? Men and children usually, and they are fed by the cooks. And how they rack their brains and consult the cookbooks to find some- thing new, or that will be a surprise, while the surprise costs them an hour or more perhaps of labor on a hot day, and nothing to show for it except a new dainty that "tasted good" even when they were "too full to eat an- other mouthful" ! Then how they perspire and puff and blow, and condemn the weather, and the dear chil- dren droop around in discomfort that no one except the doctor can account for. ^If a person dies while under the regime of cooking dispensations, we are very gravely told that "in the BRIEF REFRESHMENTS FOR LEISURE MOMENTS. 159 course of Divine Providence, the Almighty has seen fit to remove " 5^ "Eat to live'' and decrease the doctor's, nurses', un- dertakers' and florists' bills. Truly, ignorance is the curse and sin of the race. ^ Youth will set her seal upon a wrinkled face if one is cheerful and properly fed. ^ If one must eat in five minutes that which should take five times as long, better wait until one has more time. 5^ Never eat, nor hire a child to eat, that which you do not relish simply because some one tells you it is "healthy." Many a dyspeptic has been made by eating "healthy" food. ^ Make changes in food gradually, and when flesh food is abandoned use whole wheat instead of white bread. ^ Eat less in summer and it will be easier to avoid the soda fountains and other pitfalls by the wayside to cool off with — they are a delusion and a snare. ^Take an inventory now and then of the things done in the home every day and surprise yourself by counting out the really unnecessary amount of cooking done. 160 THE ART OF LIVING. ^ Through custom the winter season has become a spe- cial hotbed breeder of disease. Turn where we will, there meet us teas, lunches, refreshments, receptions, dinners, suppers, and banquets. ^ Our own lack of wisdom has fdled "the house beau- tiful" with useless refuse resulting in disease. The best remedy is to cleanse the house, rest from food and work a few days, then "Go and sin no more." 5^ I have no desire to reform people or cut them over by my 'patt&rn. To reform is too expensive, to improve is the wiser plan. ^ To improve others we cannot. It is a matter of indi- vidual work and growth, that develops health and beauty from within outward. To assist in this work for others, we must make ourselves as nearly as possible ivhat we would like others to become, after their otvn model, not ours, for no two are ever cut from exactly the same pattern. ^"Though we travel the world over to find the beau- tiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not." — Emerson. 5^ If any class of women need recreation it is the busy home-makers, who have not yet been able to find mechan- ical substitutes for themselves and doubtless never will through any sort of invention. Then as the head of the BRIEF REFRESHMENTS FOR LEISURE MOMEI^TS. 161 domestic household may she issue a new edict which shall read, ''We are no longer health destroyers hut health preservers/^ "We shape, ourselves, the joy or fear Of which the coming life is made, And fill our future atmosphere With sunshine or with shade.'" — Whitti&r. ^ Order was the first law of creation. It is also the law of economy and conservation of energy in every direction. A business man and woman must have order about them if they expect success. A housewife will not stand at the top in her profession if she be disor- derly. She cannot accomplish with ease when in the midst of confusion, and cannot be considered a genuine home-maker. 5^ Nothing is more disheartening to an orderly business man, or to a friend, than to step into a disorderly home. We may find the parlor in order, but the living rooms, the dininq; room and kitchen look as thouo^h a cvclone had hit them, and the pantry speaks of extravagance and waste from the bread box to the top shelf, where food stands exposed just as it was removed from the table. The Art of Living means order, economy, and an attractive home in every sense of that word. Women should know all the ins and outs of the art 162 THE ART OF LIVING. of living as a business, then there need be no friction in the home. ^ "The strength of a nation, especially of a republican nation, is in the intelligent and well-ordered homes of the people.'' — Mrs. Sigourney. ^ "The curse of the present age is in parents educating their children to live on a plane above themselves; thus the parents starve themselves that the children may ap- pear well." — ^Yade. ^ Parents shield their children from work, and the girls sit around, play, go out for pleasure, while the mother does all the work. There are too many ornamental boys and girls nowadays; the mother not only works for them, but cooks for and cares for their guests, while they have "just a lovely time," — mistaken kindness, that shows its fruits when placed in homes of their own. ^ As people "get along in years" according to the alma- nac, the children think it is time for them to give up their property and their work and live with them. Don't do it. If you have but a small home keep busy and be your own mistress. Now is the time to live your best life, be happy, keep in touch with the world, get ac- quainted with yourself and grow young. BKIEF REFEESHMENTS FOR LEISURE MOMENTS. 163 5^ It is no wonder there are so many poor people in the world, for those who can ill afford it will have what others do if it is possible to obtain it. ^ Inferior cooks ruin the most expensive food, making it more fit for the garbage pail than the human stomach. ^ Perfect yourselves in your work whatever it may be, and you will be trusted, command consideration, respect, and good wages for faithful service. 5^ The moment you mention a change to some people there arises such a spirit of aggression that to attempt a better way would be worse than useless. Then be as d'iscreet as possible and converts will be made without knowing how it was done. 5^ Had the stomach the power of photographing the com- motion caused by a hot dinner half masticated, drowned with hot tea, coffee, milk or ice water, followed by frozen puddings and creams, the illustration might prove of greater value than all previous physiological instruction. ^ Introduce no unpleasant subject at the table. Do not inquire about the death, illness, or trouble of anyone. Leave all business worries in the office or store and household frets and domestic revolts and gossip outside the dining room. 164 THE ART OF LIVING. ^ True hospitalit}^ comes from heart service^, and not from table service. What is good for a guest is good for your own famih\ ^The table should be so neat in all its appointments and food so vv^ell served that no apologies need be made should a chance guest appear at mealtime. ^ "If you desire a guest's return, let him set the hour of liis departure and speed him on the hour.^' — Wade. ^ All are not endowed with ability and wisdom to do what are called the great things of life. All are serv- ants, and the higher the service rendered the more is one a servant. There is no menial service unless we make it such. Labor is honorable and all should aim to do the best work if they would be great in their line of labor whether it be writing, teaching or sweeping ; wash- ing floors, chopping wood, digging ditches or conducting the affairs of a nation. And above all things, remember that those who do the lesser work make it possible for others to do the greater. 5^ Love for one's work is the way to make it light, and never a troublesome drudgery, hence we should put our best talent into everything we do. 5^ "I am my best not simply for myself, but for the world." — Phillips Brooks. PREPARE TO LIVE. •' All that is needed for humanity's redemption from all that is dwarf- ing the race is to come to full self -consciousness, knowing ourselves for what we are, beings of divine origin, divine constitution, and divine destiny."— 7?. Fay Mills. Our mentality and spirituality are broadening out and a few years are being added to the span of physical life. This means that a part of the human family are paus- ing in their career toward death and turning the tide toward life and so lessening the number of unconscious suicides. Our aim should be to attain to the finest con- ditions of robust health; to be men and women who are intelligently preparing themselves to live forever, and to occupy the present tenement in such a manner as it never has been occupied. Even "the oldest inhabitant" has not yet realized its possibilities, but this human temple shall in time to come be glorified by the wisdom we possess and the ideals we cherish. We have forgotten to make our Heaven right here every day, but instead look for it in the future. We do not remember that we are already immortals, living in the flesh, and preparing to die or live as we think best. But we should live and not die. With dominion over all things, should we not have sufficient dominion over ourselves to learn how to live beyond any accepted limit ? When men build a college, a church, a factory, a palace, or homes for themselves, they do not say, "It 's no matter what kind of a foundation is laid it will only last a hun- dred years at best," but they put the best of stone, brick, and timber into it, knowing that with proper care it will 166 THE ART OF LIVING. stand indefinitely. These buildings represent the wealth of their accumulated energies, added to the wealth em- bodied in the material that from the tiniest grain of sand in the rock, to the smallest drop of sap in the tree, could not have been without Divine creation. Out from cosmos all has come, and each creative atom does its part and has had its mission in building the material uni- verse of which we are a part. Not only has the finger of Divinity touched all, but its essence dwells therein. Then if man builds his home of the best material with the thought that with suitable care it will stand at least as long as he requires it, even if it be centuries, with how much greater care should he build his personal house and the house of his family. Could we see every public teacher and leader in the most perfect physical and spiritual condition, and clothed with Divine inspiration that would give us live words from the living fountain, that teach us not only by example but by thorough education how to live in health of body and soul, we would witness steps toward manhood and womanhood, toward the development of every part of our being such as has never yet been seen, for we are all leading crippled lives, and only "see through a glass darkly." Who is to blame for abbreviated lives ? Who, indeed, for lives of usefulness ended suddenly on the rostrum, in the pulpit, the home, the street or at the banquet table? Cease blaming God or Providence, for they have nothing to do with it. It is time to realize that we should be masters in our own temple and that we are responsible for the working of its machinery just as PREPARE TO LIVE. 167 surely as we are responsible for the order and care of any other piece of mechanism. Let us wake up to our possibilities and Prepare to Live. Is it not time to set a priceless value upon ourselves and our children, and care for them with far more than the scientific wisdom and skill which we bestow upon the animal race? We are of greater value than any other sentient life ; then let us begin at the foundation and bring to its aid suit- able material that shall build that life, and grow and keep it in repair. '' Too late," you say. It is never too late for anything in life's economies. The man of fifty looks out upon his barren field and says, "I would set that field over with fruit trees, but they would not benefit me; I shall not live to see them in bearing condition, or I shall not live to reap any benefit from timber I might start into growth." How narrow a mind, pessi- mistic and dyspeptic, and on the wrong side of selfish- ness that induces poverty of soul ! Another plants and reaps the benefit; he is one who would plant that others might reap if he did not, and so invites youth to his soul. Are we full of aches and pains and infirmities that have been our pets for years, until by care and love and close attention to their wants and airing them among our friends they have become larger than ourselves? Think about it, and how from a small beginning they have developed into unwieldy and undesirable propor- tions. There is time to right about face, look at them over our shoulder, turn over a new leaf, renew the mind toward the body with such thought and deed as shall make possible by gradual change a body with new life. It is possible to displace the old pets with flesh that need 168 THE ART OF LIVING. not feel pain, with joints that move easily, with brain that thinks clearly and sends its building substance thrilling from head to foot, and the blood vibrating with new life free from obstructions that have been removed from its pathway. It has been said, "As man is regen- erative he has the matter of rebuilding himself into natural conditions absolutely in his own power, if he will but direct the forces at his command intelligently and honestly. If this is not correct there must have been some grievous error in his creation." Unconscious suicides, pause and ask whither you are tending. Are you not daily adding to the cable of habit, link after link, that as surely ends in suicide, as is the one who ends his life by suddenly severing the chain? Look back upon the way you have come and forward to the way you may go. If the ways of the past are tend- ing toward brevity, of years, it may be to your advantage to travel the other way and live. There is much to live for, and no one is so wealthy that he can afford to cast life carelessly away, or abridge it in any direction. Tliere is much to learn, and the world is our schoolroom and workshop. Living to die has been one of the most conspicuous occupations of the race, and we have not yet become aware of the fact. Birth, life, death, follow in rapid succession, and we do not ask why in millions of cases life is so brief, and we are not done ascribing to Providence the cause of our days of grief over departed youth, and the brilliant lights that go out later on. We travel the same road with quicksands under our feet, with nerves keyed to the tension limit, lest we fail to i^each some point for which we are aiming in life's PEEPARE TO LIVE. 169 honors or the wealth we fain would grasp. We neglect to rest or think that the temple in which we travel must sooner or later yield to the pressure, that its fine cords and wires must strain and stretch until perchance they suddenly snap, and the day is done for us. Although the average length of life is increasing, the world is still the camping ground of an educated civili- zation that produces invalids and semi-invalids, with pills, powders and potions, stimulants and narcotics their daily companions. In it is a creative part of the social fabric that produces physical, mental and social excrescences ; they are being daily born and made, and millions of money is being yearly expended to escort them comfortably through their wearisome lives. When will our public educators in all branches of business learn the Art of Living to live, that through education the world will gradually cease the cultivation of fruit that is in a state of preparation to die before its unsought and too often unwelcome advent into life? This little world of ours is a theater, and without its drama of comedy and tragedy it would be tame indeed. But through the contagion and culture of disease in its myriad forms, physical, moral, and social, which are a part of education toward death, they hold a surplus of the tragical that constantly appeals to our sympathies through the deep tragedies of daily life. The problem of how far preventable these things may be is yet in its infancy, and the time is ripe for us to take counsel with our best friend, the self within the temple, and apologize for the lack of respect we have shown in the past, and resolve to be more obedient to the highest and best with- 170 THE ART OF LIVING. in, and so Prepare to Live. We need not remember so much about our birthdays, and so count the months and years according to the almanac, for there is no limit — no birth, no real death — only life here, there, and every- where. Ours is youth in its maturity blooming in the air of Heaven, here and there forever; and even in this house of clay it may become so ripe, so enlarged with wisdom, truth and love, that daily association will almost fail to realize that the time has come for the occu- pant to remove to a larger mansion, and be clothed in the invisible garments of his own weaving. There is no need to pause at the half century mile- stone when we have reared a family, lift the brown locks and say, "See the gray hairs, look at the wrinkles ; surely I am growing old !" and every day repeat the operation until you have made it a business to grow old, decrepit and gray ! We are in our prime just then, and bound- ing health with springing footsteps should be ours. Prepare to Live, for it is possible for the coming half century at least to be your best if you make it so. There is plenty of time for seed sowing, for its growth, blos- soming and fruitage even at sixty, seventy or eighty years. What may not the soul develop in a strong, healthy temple? But few have told us because they have not given attention to the matter of preparing to live. "But have you had experience, and do you know what you are asking of us T^ "Yes, I know, for out of the depths I have come more than once, else I could not have written this book." To live in the best sense will be to reach out toward the highest ideals we are capable of forming. PREPARE TO LIVE. 1"1 The whole tenor of this book from cover to cover is to Prepare to Live as we have not yet done; to make the most of ourselves in these human temples, ^^ in no other way will it be possible to graduate with the highest honors into the higher school of perpetual education and youth. You who read these pages will begin to think about it, turn your thoughts upon yourselves and ask "How shall we begin?" You will read to "wagh and consider," for you have invited me to write^ First get health" and this message will aid you. Consult your bodily needs and attend to them, so shall the new and orderly temple keep in repair and almost thmk for itself . It only needs air, water, shelter, food, clothing, and free- dom It instinctively calls for these, but, unlike other sentient life, is helpless to supply them in their proper proportions unless you, the 1 within the temple, are com- petent through education to grant the needs m suitable manner. Prepare to Live ; be an example yourself then you can have no better occupation for a portion of your time and means than in helpfulness to others who desire to be moving toward the better way. None are too low, none too exalted, to be denied assistance from you. ihe world is your home, your kindergarten, your schoolroom and college, and there is no limit to work therein. The few are doing all they can. The harvest is ripe and may the new century add thousands to the army of educators who will aid in preparing millions to live. Deeds are thoughts materialized from spiritual ideals. This little world of ours, so grand and beautifu , is the realization of the Infinite Creative Ideal. We who have dominion over all material things are also creators. ^^^ THE AKT OF LIVING. Then let us, through a practical knowledge of the Arf of Lmng, create beautiful temples of health for the soul thro^^h winch it may expand, breathe, think execute and live out its noblest ideals. ' r^ MAR 17 1903