How to Eat | Page 6

cut a tree down with only an axe handle. But
that is not the fault of the handle. The fault is obviously your own. Now
suppose you get the axe and fit the handle to it. You can then cut the
tree down if you work hard enough at the task. Again, suppose you cut
the tree half way through and quit. Will the axe keep on until the work
is done? You know it will not, and you very well know if you wish to
be cured you must keep on doing your part of the work or dieting will
be of no value whatever to you. Now suppose a man comes along and
tells you that the axe you have is no good and therefore it is no use for
you to keep on trying to use it. That is exactly what some physicians
still say about Fletcherizing.
But you say, "I must cut this tree down. Nobody will do it for me; how
shall I get it down? Can you give me an axe that will cut it down?"
"Oh, no," he replies, "but anyway there's no use fooling with that one."
Then, if you are determined to do the work, you say, "I have to cut the
tree down. You have no other axe to offer me, so I'm going to try the
one I have." And you go ahead and cut down the tree. Then just as you
have finished, the man comes your way again, and in great delight you
call out to him: "Come and see! I cut this tree down with the axe you
said was no good!"
The man comes over to you and says, "Where's the tree? I don't see it!"
You are astonished and you tell him, "There it lies on the ground right
before your eyes! Can't you see it?"
But he turns and walks away saying: "There is no tree there; it is all in

your mind."
This is exactly what people with "nerves" have been told again and
again by physicians, by relatives, and by most other people who have
never had "nerves."
I tell you these things so that when you begin to eat sparingly and chew
your food to a cream you may fortify yourself against well-meaning but
mistaken friends and relatives. And, oddly enough, it does seem that
the individual with "nerves" has more friends and relatives than any
other person in the world.
Remember you must not only chew your food to the consistency of
cream for one or two months, you must make this practice a lifelong
habit. If you cannot take time to eat a meal in this way, you had much
better go hungry. To people who travel and must frequently take their
meals in railroad eating houses, I would say, get some bread and butter
sandwiches and eat them slowly while on the train. There is always a
chance to secure all you need to eat, too. You may not always be able
to sit an hour at the table--the time we should give to a meal if we eat
as we should. I know many object to this rule on the ground that if we
followed it we should get nothing else done. But that is nonsense. Did
not the Master of us all say, "Are there not twelve hours in the day?"
Then can we not devote three of the twelve to our food? If we have
nine hours in which we are at our highest efficiency, is it not good
sense, if we eat three meals a day, to give three hours to these meals?
There is only one sane answer to the question; we should take an hour
for a meal.
Every now and then some magazine writer will state that the chewing
of food to a cream does not help anybody. He will tell you that you can
swallow your food any old way and it will not hurt you in the least. In
fact, I actually saw an article in one of our leading periodicals
containing just such statements. We should, I suppose, have only pity
for an editor who would give space to such stuff, and should also pity
the poor wretch who by writing it is striving to attain notoriety. At any
rate there is one excellent thing about such lies, they do harm for only a
little while. When people find out that a thing is harmful to them, they

usually quit it, no matter how many notoriety seekers are urging and
encouraging them to keep on.
Usually the sufferer with "nerves" is the only one in the household who
will eat sparingly and chew his food slowly. But now and then I find an
intelligent, sympathetic man who will do