TRAVELS IN TWO COLOURS.

Real play, like every other reality, comes from what our mechanical and practical intelligences have called “within.”

Real play arises when the “I” is in direct contact with the myself, with Life, with God, with the actuality moving beneath all symbolic representations.

It is only when “I,” the practical, intelligent, abstract-making, idealising, generalising, clever, separated “I,” the “I” which has a past, a present anda future, renounces its usurpation of the steering apparatus, that play can be. “I,” to play or to pray or to love, must be born again. “I” must relinquish all. “I” must have neither experience nor knowledge, neither loves nor hates, neither “thought” nor “feeling” nor “will”—nor anything that can arrest the action of the inner life. When this complete relaxation, which has its physical as well as its mental aspect, is achieved, then and then only can “I” rise up and play. Then “I” shall rediscover all the plays in the world in their origin. “I” shall understand the war-dance of the “savage.” “I” shall know something about the physical convulsions of primitive “conversion.” The arts may begin to be open doors to me. “I” shall have stood “under,” understood my universe, in the brief moment when “I” abandoned myself to the inner reality. The words of the great “teachers” will grow full of meaning. My own “experiences” will be re-read. I shall see more clearly with my surface intelligence what I must do. I shall be personal in everything, personal in my play. Surface self-consciousness which holds me back from all spontaneous activity will disappear in proportion as “I” am immersed in the greater “me.”

Look at that woman walking primly down the lane to the sea with her bathing-dress. She is a worker on a holiday. But she cannot play. She goes down every day to bathe in the Cornish sea, the sea that on a calm sunny day is like liquid Venetian glass and flings at you, under the least breeze, long, green, foam-crested billows that carry you off our feet if you stand even waist-high. She potters in the shallows and splashes herself to avoid taking cold. Her intelligent “I” is uppermost. Her world of every day never leaves her. She will go back to it as she came, unchanged. Her wistful face betrays the seeker lost amidst unrealities. If the “I” were a little more intelligent, she might try to defy the surrounding ocean, to pit her powers against it, to swim. She would learn a most practical and useful and withal invigorating accomplishment. Ifher busy, watchful “I” could be arrested she might “see” the billows, the sky and the headlands reared on either side of her bay. She might dance into the water, and see her world dance back. She would fling herself amongst the wavelets where she stands and splashes. She might give herself up and know nothing but the beauty and strength around her. It would not teach her to swim, but she would have taken a step towards the great game of walking upon the waters.

D.M. Richardson.

One is often tempted to suspect that in some schools there is a deep-laid plot to destroy in the bud any love for poetry which children may possess. Otherwise how is it that little boys and girls are made to commit to memory William Blake at his highest reach of mystical fire, as inTiger, Tiger, burning bright, or William Wordsworth at his lowest ebb of uninspired simplicity, as inWe are seven? These are very popular, apparently, as poems for children to recite; yet in the one case it is beyond any teacher's power to show children the unearthly flaming beauty which alone gives the poem its peculiar quality and undefinable power; and in the other the maudlin sentimentalism and almost priggish piety of the verses are positively dangerous to the child's health of mind. Both types of recitation work out in the end to this—that when the child attains adolescence, and the great world of literature dawns on the hungry mind, an evil association of ideas has been established—the association of poetry, the highest of all arts, either with the saying of lines without meaning, or with the learning of “poems” devoid of what wholesome youth really desires or enjoys.

People may wrangle all night as to whether the normal healthy child is at heart a mystic or a realist;whether he likes fairy tales because they show him a magical world where flowers can talk and umbrellas are turned into black geese, or because they tell of strange romantic things happening to a real human boy like himself; but there can be no shadow of doubt that much of the verse intended for children is either too clever in its humour to make them laugh, or too bald in its matter or tone to stir the romance that is never quite asleep in their hearts. There are really surprisingly few versifiers who have altogether avoided these errors. Some of George Macdonald'sPoems for Childrenare almost perfect, both as regards lyrical form, simplicity of language and in the unobtrusiveness of the inner truth they convey. For example,

“The lightning and thunderThey go and they come;But the stars and the stillnessAre always at home.”

But others come perilously near mere versified moralising. Lewis Carroll's nonsense verses in the two famousAlicebooks are supreme among their kind; but are they not sometimes just a shade too ingenious, or too adult in wit? Probably Stevenson, in those seemingly artless poems inA Child's Book of Verse, comes nearest to a level perfection. Who has ever approached him in his power to understand and express the small child's world, desires and delights, without a trace of the grown-up's condescension or self-consciousness?

Well, these great ones are no longer in the world; yet, with the recognition of their genius, there is the usual danger of bemoaning the lack of worthy successors. Not but what there is some excuse for such lamentation; for this reason that every Christmas there is a veritable flood of children's verse, a great deal of which is either painfully didactic, painfully sentimental, painfully funny or painfully foolish.

What I wish to do at the moment is to call attention to the fact that there is one man alive in England—one of many, I do not doubt: but one at a time!—who is doing “nonsense verses” for children which are guiltless of all the faults I have indicated above.

Jack Goring is known among some of his friends as “The Jolly Rhymster.” He writes his verses first for his own children, and then publishes them from time to time for the pleasure of other children. The secret of his success is partly that he knows that even small children like a story to be an adventure; partly that he understands how their own romances, the things they picture or hum to themselves when well-meaning adults are not worrying them, or rather, trying to amuse them, begin—wherever they may end!—with a perfectly tangible object, such as a pillar-box, a rag-doll or a toy locomotive. One of “The Jolly Rhymster's” best things begins—

“Finger-post, finger-post, why do you standPointing all day with your silly flat hand?”

—which is exactly the sort of question that a very small child in all probability does really ask itself when it has seen a finger-post day after day at a cross-roads. How the poem continues and where it ends you must find out for yourself. It's all in a book calledThe Ballad of Lake Laloo.

In the recently published volume[15]that now lies before me, this telling of a tale of wonder which begins with an ordinary thing is again evident. Nip and Flip, aged six and four respectively, are the adventurers; and they make three voyages in this little book. In the first,The Fourpenny-Ha'penny Ship, they circumnavigate the world. Now please note how Mr Goring strikes the right note at the very outset:

“Nip and FlipTook a holiday tripOn a beautiful fourpenny-ha'penny shipWith a dear little handkerchief sail;And they sang, ‘Yo ho!We shall certainly goTo the end of the world and back, you know,And capture the great Seakale.’”

[15]Nip and Flip.By Jack Goring. Illustrated by Caterina Patricchio. 1s. net (postage 1½d.). C.W. Daniel, Ltd., 3 Tudor Street, London, E.C.

And there follows a picture (in black and gold) of this strange monster, just to make sure that no one will suppose they were out after a vegetable.

The tale moves along, as such stories should, very rapidly. Thus—

“And when they came to the end of the world,Their dear little handkerchief sail they furledAnd put on the kettle for tea.”

But you have only just time to look at the tea things when—

“But alas! and alackAbout six o'clockThe good ship strackOn the Almond RockAnd split like a little split pea.”

So the story goes on, through divers adventures,

“From Timbuctoo to Timbucthree”

and so at last home again.

The next voyage is to the land of Make-Believe on a Christmas Eve, “in a long, long train of thought.” In the course of this tale we are given a little picture of Flip herself, and here it is for you to look at.A girl wearing a dress, with a ribbon in her hair.Only, in the book her shoes and stockings, the inside of her skirt, and the squiggly things on the top of her head are a bright golden colour.

The third voyage is all the fault of a toy monkey—“six three-farthings and cheap at the price”—and takes them among whales, mermaids, sea-serpents and other deep-sea creatures.

Here, then, are delightful little pictures on every page, which even a two-year-old will enjoy. And here are verses which most boys and girls under seven or eight will like to learn. And the best of it is that it doesn't matter a bit if they do “sing-song” them, for they are the kind of verses which only sound right from the lips of quite small children who have never been taught elocution.

Edgar J. Saxon

SOUP.—Oxtail from 10a.m.—From a Restaurant Menu.

What it was in the early morning it would be indiscreet to inquire.

I learn that a serum for mumps is now being made at the Pasteur Institute. “A number of monkeys were inoculated with the serum,” saysThe Times(30th July), “and a mild form of the disease was produced.” It is an age of scientific progress, so we may expect news shortly of sera for toothache, hiccough, and the hump. It will not be necessary to inoculate camels for the last.

You will say—with Mr Arnold Bennett, the distinguished playwright and novelist—“the tonic effect of ********* on me is simplywonderful.”—From an advt. inPunch.

You may join in the chorus if you like, but you mustn't all expect to be simplywonderfulplaywrights and testimonialists.

A Strange Shampoo....“I make my chemist get the stallax for me,” said she. “It comes only in sealed packages, enough to make up twenty-five or thirty individual shampoos, and it smells so good I could almost eat it.”—Secrets of Beautycolumn inThe Daily Sketch.

Which only shows how careful one has to be.

In the days to come every army will fight on bloodless food.—Herald of the Golden Age.

When every army fights on bloodless food, we may be just as far from the Golden Age as we are now.

I am told that an obscure practitioner who sent up an account of some interesting discoveries, addressed to

MEDICAL CONGRESS,DIETETICS SECTION,LONDON.

has had his communication returned by the Post Office, markedNot Known.

There is no truth, it is said, in the rumour that a secret meeting was held during the Congress to discuss the proposed raising of the rate of commission payable by surgeons to physicians.

Peter Piper.

Exaggeration is popularly regarded as one of the vices of food reformers; but it is certainly no exaggeration whatever to say that Mr Eustace Miles and the restaurant associated with his name have had a large share in bringing about the more sympathetic attitude towards “food reform” noticeable on all sides to-day.

Mr Miles is no amateur in the gentle art of self-advertisement: he would be the first to admit it. But the advertisements have resulted undoubtedly in a very large number of people taking the first steps towards food reform, people who are repelled by the out-and-out “vegetarian” propaganda.

There are those who view with disfavour the introduction of manufactured or artificial foods into the health movement; they think it hinders simplicity. There is a truth in this; but, on the other hand, it must be recognised that the great majority cannot be reached save by meeting them half-way. This applies to the flavours of foods, the digestibility of foods and the convenience of foods. Few can go straight from beef to nuts. After generations of abuse the human digestive system has to be humoured if the ideal is to be approached. And in this invaluable work of meeting people half-way and of humouring their tastes and digestions, the restaurant in Chandos Street, London,the specially prepared foods made and sold there and the strongly individual, thoroughly sane and pleasantly straightforward advocacy of Mr. Eustace Miles have been a very important factor.

The idea behind “Emprote”—the Eustace Miles Proteid Food—is that, being a blend, in powder form, of various kinds of proteid (the proteids of milk, of wheat, and so forth) it supplies the right kind of substitute for flesh foods not only because it is so easily assimilated, but because it is in a very convenient and easily kept form.

We believe such foods have a very definite and necessary part in the progress of the individual from the customary unhealthy diet to the better ways of feeding. The following recipes illustrate some of the methods of using “Emprote.” They are taken from the booklet45 Quick and Easy Recipes for Healthy, Meatless Meals, to be obtained for 2½d. post free from 40 Chandos Street, London, W.C.—

NOTE.—These Savoury Sandwiches can form a complete meal with a little salad (dressed with oil and lemon juice), or celery or lettuce or watercress or other salad material.

3 oz. of cheddar cheese; 1 oz. of “Emprote”; the juice of half a lemon; two tablespoonfuls of fresh tomato pulp or tomato chutney; a pinch of celery salt.

Prepare some slices of not too new bread and butter. Mill the cheese, add to it the “Emprote” and the celery salt, then add the tomato pulp or chutney and the lemon juice. Mix all well together into a smooth stiff paste, and spread upon the slices, and form sandwiches, which may be eaten with watercress or lettuce or cucumber. If the material is too moist, mix in a little more “Emprote,” or else “Procrums.”

One teacupful of macaroni; two tablespoonfuls of milled cheese one tablespoonful of butter; one dessertspoonful of flour; one tablespoonful of “Emprote”; one large cupful of milk.

Boil the macaroni for half-an-hour in a little water. Strain the macaroni and put it in the bottom of a buttered dish. (Put the liquid in the stock-pot, to thicken a soup.) Mill the cheese, and put half of it over the macaroni. In the small saucepan make a sauce of the butter, flour, milk and “Emprote.” Pour this over the macaroni and cheese, sprinkle the rest of the cheese on the top, put in the pan to brown, then serve.

Mince two large onions very fine, and fry in 1 oz. of butter; add 3 oz. of “Proto-Savoury,” one dessertspoonful of Nutril, 1 oz. of breadcrumbs (or “Procrums”), and one egg. Scoop the seeds from one large vegetable marrow, fill with the mixture, and bake for one hour. Serve with Apple Sauce.

NOTE.—“Proto-Savoury,” “Nutril,” and “Procrums” are special “E.M.” products and are readily obtainable from health Food Stores, etc.

When cutlets or croquettes are heated up, or when macaroni or vegetables or a vegetable stew (none of which are really adequate substitutes for meat) are to be made nourishing, mix some of the E.M. Savoury (or Mulligatawny, or Blended) Gravy Powder, with hot water, to the thickness of gravy, and add to the dish.

In cold weather fruit is often cold, and if heated in an oven may be injured partially or wholly. Here is, perhaps, a new way of warming fruit which has been tried and proves satisfactory. Wash the apples, pears, oranges, bananas and wipe them and place on a dish on the dinner-table. Also place a jug of boiling water and a bowl upon the table. Then when the fruit is required pour the hot water into the bowl and place the fruit in it and cover with a plate until warm enough to eat comfortably. Bananas should be peeled before placing in hot water.“A.R.”

“A.R.”

Under this heading our contributor, Dr Valentine Knaggs, deals briefly month by month, and according as space permits, with questions of general interest to health seekers and others.

In all Queries relating to health difficulties it is essential that full details of the correspondent's customary diet should be clearly given.

Correspondents are earnestly requested to write onone side only of the paper, giving full name and address, not for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith. When an answer is required by post a stamped addressed envelope must be enclosed.—[Eds.]

Mrs M.K. writes:—Until the last few years I have been subject to sciatica and a certain amount of dry eczema. About a year ago my health greatly improved, with the exception of the eczema, which has much increased the last year, coming out in large angry spots which irritate. I am 69, small, spare and white, have never been strong until a year ago, have led a sedentary life, being an artist. Three years ago I left off eating meat. My diet at present is:On rising.—Cup of hot rain-water.Breakfast(8a.m.)—Unfired Bread with butter and pine nuts; cup of weak tea, no sugar.At 11.—One raw apple.Dinner(1p.m.)—One lightly boiled egg or an omelette, with “Artox” home-made bread, and butter conservatively cooked celery orbroccoli; stiff milk pudding with eggs in it, or “Artox” pastry.Tea(5p.m.).—Weak China tea “Artox” bread, and butter, and home-made plain cake.Supper(8.30).—Slice of bread and butter; tumblerful of hot rain-water sipped at bedtime.I have not been able to digest uncooked vegetables, excepting lettuce; nor do I eat other fruit than apples; any sweet things cause acidity. I do not suffer with constipation.

On rising.—Cup of hot rain-water.

Breakfast(8a.m.)—Unfired Bread with butter and pine nuts; cup of weak tea, no sugar.

At 11.—One raw apple.

Dinner(1p.m.)—One lightly boiled egg or an omelette, with “Artox” home-made bread, and butter conservatively cooked celery orbroccoli; stiff milk pudding with eggs in it, or “Artox” pastry.

Tea(5p.m.).—Weak China tea “Artox” bread, and butter, and home-made plain cake.

Supper(8.30).—Slice of bread and butter; tumblerful of hot rain-water sipped at bedtime.

I have not been able to digest uncooked vegetables, excepting lettuce; nor do I eat other fruit than apples; any sweet things cause acidity. I do not suffer with constipation.

In this case it will be noted that the skin disease occurred simultaneously with a marked improvement in health. This shows that Nature was adopting her usual plan of forcing the impurities outwards to the surface and that the change of diet made this possible. Withher body less encumbered with waste a return of health became possible.

The plan now to adopt is not to check this skin trouble but to cure it along safe lines by amending the diet and purifying the skin itself by means of warm alkaline baths.

These baths, which should be taken twice a week at first, are made by adding a ¼lb. of bicarbonate of soda and a ¼lb. of “Robin” starch to an ordinary hot bath at a temperature of 105 degrees, which can be gradually increased to 110 degrees as the correspondent can bear it. In this the bather stays for from ten to twenty minutes to well soak out the acids and the oily greasy waste from the surface. The starch is added because it moderates the action of the alkali and leaves a comfortable gloss on the skin after the bath is finished. The bath gradually clears the poisons from the skin and encourages the free action of perspiration, thus promoting the further elimination of waste acid poisons and at the same time clearing the skin and making it healthy.

The next thing to do is to amend the diet so that as little waste as possible shall be formed. Rice is the cereal that contains the least amount of waste of any kind and this should therefore be the cereal selected. The wholemeal, although good for most people, is not suited to this case. A strict salt-free diet is also necessary, as it is often the retention of salt in the system that leads to the presence of eczema. The following amended diet should suit the case, and it should be continued until the skin has quite cleared itself:—

On rising.—Cup of filtered boiled rain-water.

Breakfast.—Cottage cheese, 2 oz.; rice, boiled or steamed without salt (large plateful), with Granose biscuits or toasted “Maltweat” bread.

At11a.m.—More rain-water (not fruit).

Lunch.—The same as breakfast.

Tea.—Hot rain-water only.

Supper, 6.30.—The same as breakfast.

When the skin is quite clear the correspondent canreturn to the wholemeal bread (but biscuits made with “Artox” would be better than the yeastless bread), and also to a more varied diet generally, as at present.

J.G. writes:—My hearing got bad about twenty years ago, caused I think by a cold in the head. When in bed I can hear the tick of a watch with the left ear but the other is almost stone deaf. I am not much at a loss in ordinary conversation, but in trying to hear people speak I lose much of what is said. Although I have no real pain, my head is rarely clear, feeling full and congested. I have now and again a slight sensation of giddiness or reeling. The right ear runs some offensive matter, and there is always a hissing sound. I live what is, I think, a simple life, but I must confess to a little smoking. My general health is good. I am a working farmer and fairly active for one of my age (69). My diet is generally as follows:On rising.—One or two cups of warm water, sometimes with lemon juice.Breakfast.—An apple or orange, oatcake and dairy butter. Baker's bread and one cup of tea.Lunch.—Nil, or perhaps I should say that I eat an apple or orange before each meal or a bit of turnip or even cabbage.Supper.—Potatoes with fish, and milk pudding. On some days it may be broth with meat cooked in it.Before retiring.—Nothing but water, or at other times oatcake and one cup of milk.

On rising.—One or two cups of warm water, sometimes with lemon juice.

Breakfast.—An apple or orange, oatcake and dairy butter. Baker's bread and one cup of tea.

Lunch.—Nil, or perhaps I should say that I eat an apple or orange before each meal or a bit of turnip or even cabbage.

Supper.—Potatoes with fish, and milk pudding. On some days it may be broth with meat cooked in it.

Before retiring.—Nothing but water, or at other times oatcake and one cup of milk.

There does not seem to be much prospect of this correspondent recovering the hearing of his right ear, as the conditions have lasted so long. He might, however, certainly try by diet and hygiene to get rid of the unpleasant discharge and the noises. To effect this he should carefully syringe the ear once or twice a day with a weak solution (1 grain to the ounce) of permanganate of potash, using an all-rubber ear-syringe.

Then he should get someone to well stretch the upper bones of the spine and to massage well the muscles at the back of the neck to induce, thereby, a better circulation in the nerves and blood-vessels which proceed from that part of the spine into the ears. In this way he will be able to ensure a removal of the clogging poisons which are lurking in the bad ear and thus promote less noises and a better health state of the ears generally. The diet should be amended as follows:—

On rising.—One or two cups of warm water, with lemon juice added.

At 8. Breakfast.—Apples, oranges or other fruit only.Take plenty of fruit at this meal and eat it at no other time.

At 12. Lunch.—One boiled egg or some cream cheese: Oatcakes and butter or good wholemeal biscuits (“P.R.” or “Ixion” kinds) and butter, and a plateful of finely grated raw roots (carrots, turnip, etc.).

Tea meal.—One cupful of Hygiama, using water in place of milk.

Dinner.—Cheddar cheese or cottage cheese (the latter is best); potatoes and a green vegetable, cooked by baking or steaming, without salt. No broth or meat. (Meat and especially meat broths are very undesirable in this case.)

Before retiring.—Hot water only.

J.A.B. writes:—I have been a reader ofThe Healthy Lifefor the last six months, and am suffering from a complaint since I was three years old. When three years old I was attacked by scarlet fever and on getting better I had a discharge from my right ear. This continued for several years, then it would disappear and reappear at short intervals of say a few weeks. This last few years the discharge has disappeared for six months, only to reappear again for a week with severe pains in back over right shoulder and right side of neck. I always feel weak and tired when discharge reappears and sometimes experience pains in the head and cannot remember anything for a few minutes.

This correspondent needs a suitable diet in order to purify his blood stream and to promote elimination of bodily poisons which are evidently affecting his ears. He also needs suitable massage and stretching movements applied to the upper part of the spine, which is functioning badly. Then he can supplement this by taking Turkish baths or wet sheet packs to promote a free action of the skin and thus clear away poisonouswaste from the system. The same diet as recommended to the previous correspondent should be tried.

Mrs C.E.J. writes:—I have been making cottage cheese curdling the milk with lemon juice, as recommended inThe Healthy Life. Suppose the milk contains disease germs, would not this cheese be injurious, as the milk is not sterilised by being brought to boiling point? I have also been drinking the whey from the same, as it as given inThe Healthy Life Beverage Book. I notice in a reply given in this month's issue that Dr Knaggs states that the whey of the milk is the dangerous element. Since reading this answer I have been somewhat in doubt as to drinking the whey. I should like to know if it can be taken without harmful effects.

Ordinary unboiled milk, free from preservatives, is far less dangerous to health than boiled milk, because Nature inserts in the raw milk certain germs known as the lactic-acid-producing bacilli, which protect us from the injurious germs. These lactic germs cause the milk to go sour and produce in this way the much-extolled soured or curdled milk. They convert the sugar of the whey into lactic acid by a process of fermentation. If milk is boiled it cannot go sour because the germs natural to it have been destroyed by the heat and it becomes necessary to introduce fresh lactic germs into the boiled milk as is done in the artificial production of curdled milk. Failing this, milk will undergo, not lactic fermentation, butputrefaction, and thereby develop highly dangerous qualities.

When a person takes soured milk its lactic acid acts as a powerful germ destroyer and in a certain concentration it actually kills the lactic germs as well. It also keeps down the disease-producing germs of putrefaction which work in an alkaline medium (opposite to acid) by depriving them of the sugar of the whey.

Boiled milk, if set on one side, in warm weather, speedily becomes alkaline and putrid or putrefactive. It is in this condition that, when babies take it, they are made dreadfully ill with diarrhœa and inflammation of the stomach and bowels. Hence it is the chief cause of the appalling mortality among infants in hot weather.

Mrs F.K.J. need have no fear of any harm coming to her as a result of eating cottage cheese, but she should not take the whey unless she has decided to undergo a whey cure and takenothing but whey; in this latter case, there being no other foods taken, there will be no germs to act harmfully upon it. If there is much flatulence and stomach or bowel trouble sweet milk or whey will simply feed the germs which are the cause of the digestive trouble, or self-poisoning, and are thus far better discarded.

Miss N.S. writes:—For the last three weeks I have been troubled with a very bad cough It started in the first place with a cold in the head and then it got on my chest, and do what will I cannot get rid of it. I have been having honey and lemon juice, and also each morning have taken olive oil and lemon juice beaten up together, but without (apparently) any effect. I have bad coughing fits in the night and the next morning I do not feel up to much.I may say that I have not taken meat for about six years, and I try to follow the kind of diet advocated inThe Healthy Life.I am 23 years of age and a typist in an office, which is about 4 miles from my home. I try to get out in the fresh air as much as possible to counteract any bad effects which may arise from my work. My people at home are very much opposed to my food reform sympathies and efforts.

I may say that I have not taken meat for about six years, and I try to follow the kind of diet advocated inThe Healthy Life.

I am 23 years of age and a typist in an office, which is about 4 miles from my home. I try to get out in the fresh air as much as possible to counteract any bad effects which may arise from my work. My people at home are very much opposed to my food reform sympathies and efforts.

This correspondent should consult a sensible doctor about this cough and thus be on the safe side. It is unwise to allow a cough to become chronic without ascertaining the cause of it. Coughs are often due to stomach and liver trouble, as distinguished from lung trouble. In either case a salt-free diet will greatly help. Thus

Breakfast.—All fresh fruit, nothing else but fruit. Apples best. (Notstewed fruit).

Lunch.—Boiled or steamed rice, done without salt; about 2 oz. cottage cheese or a poached egg; a little raw carrot, turnip or artichoke, finely grated, with dressing of fruit-oil beaten up with a raw egg. The grated roots must be well chewed; as a change theymay be cut up and cooked in a casserole with very little water.

Dinner.—Potato baked in skin, with fresh butter, a little cheese, or flaked nuts, and a few plain rusks, or a saucer of P.R. Breakfast Food, dry, with cream. The honey and lemon juice should be disgarded in favour of liquorice (little bits being sucked at intervals) or of linseed tea. I have often found an obstinate cough yield to a diet which contains lactic acid buttermilk, combined with the use of the new oxygen baths. The lactic acid buttermilk can be obtained from any good dairy and should be taken in the morning fasting and at bedtime.

W.G.B. writes:—Referring to article in January number entitled “Grape juice for all,” I think perhaps it would interest others besides myself if Dr Knaggs would give us his opinion on the value of what are commonly termed “Water Grapes,” as compared with more expensive kinds.

On the Continent the grape cure is a popular method of treatment. It is especially good for those who are anæmic and underfed as well as for those who suffer in the opposite way from over-feeding. It depends upon which condition is present as to the kind of grapes selected for the cure.

Fully ripe grapes with but little acidity (water grapes) are best suited for persons suffering from anæmia and malnutrition. The unripe or sour grapes answer best for cases of over-eating associated with constipation, gout and allied disorders of nutrition. The excess of acid and cellulose helps the bowels and promotes elimination of the gouty poisons.

Our correspondent will note that for thin people who are pale and deficient in vitality the water grapes will be found most salutary. They are best taken alone at breakfast without the addition of any other form of food.

E.J.H. writes:—A friend of mine who is suffering from an attack of neuritis (not badly) is desirous of trying the diet of twice-baked standard bread as recommended by Dr Knaggs in an answerto a query inThe Healthy Lifesome months since. She has asked me if Dr Knaggs would limit the quantity of this bread taken in the course of the day. If Dr Knaggs will very kindly tell me this I shall be greatly obliged.

Neuritis is a form of rheumatism or gout which involves the nerves. Its usual starting centre is the spine itself, from which all the nerves of the body spring. The diet needs to be greatly restricted so that the poisons can be eliminated. The most important foods to cut down are the cereals because they are very slow to digest and are apt to cause constipation with its attendant self-poisoning of the system with uric and other acids. Horses and animals suffer from neuritis from over-feeding with cereals and beans, and the stockbreeder or horse expert usually restricts these foods and gives plenty of grass, hay, chaff and green clover, which corrects the trouble.

The same thing applies equally to man. He should take his cereals in the form they are the most easily assimilated—namely, twice-baked or dextrinised. Thus “pulled” or twice-baked bread, Granose or Melarvi biscuits, or rusks, or toasted “Maltweat” bread are the best form of cereal for people suffering from neuritis. Other treatment besides diet restriction is, of course, needed to cure neuritis, because we have to clear the clogged tissues of the poisons which are interfering with right nerve action. Thus we can resort hot alkaline baths, Turkish baths, massage and Osteopathic stretching movements to help in this respect.

H. Valentine Knaggs.

Back NumbersIf readers who possess copies of the first number ofThe Healthy Life(August 1911) will send them to the Editors, they will receive, in exchange, booklets to the value of threepence for each copy.

If readers who possess copies of the first number ofThe Healthy Life(August 1911) will send them to the Editors, they will receive, in exchange, booklets to the value of threepence for each copy.

Vol. VNo. 29December1913There will come a day when physiologists, poets, and Philosophers will all speak the same language and understand one another.—Claude Bernard.

Vol. VNo. 29December1913

There will come a day when physiologists, poets, and Philosophers will all speak the same language and understand one another.—Claude Bernard.

There are some statements, the very simplicity and truth of which create a shock—for some people. For instance, there are certain seekers after health who ignore and are shocked by the very obvious truth that “brain is flesh.” A brain poisoned by impure blood is no fit instrument for the spirit to manifest through, and “mental suggestion” must inevitably prove of no avail as a cure if the origin of the impure blood be purely material.

It is just as futile, on the other hand, to treat the chronic indigestion that arises from persistent worry, or indulgence in passion, by one change after another in the dietary. The founder of homœopathy insisted that there was no such thing as a physical “symptom” without corresponding mental and moral symptoms. “Not soul helps flesh morethan flesh helps soul.” Thus the Scientist and the Poet come to the same truth, albeit by different ways.—[Eds.]

While most of us would at first sight find fault with Mr G.K. Chesterton's sweeping advice—

“And don't believe in anythingThat can't be told in coloured pictures,”

many would probably end by endorsing it. But we should do so only because we were able to give a very wide and varied meaning to “coloured pictures.”

No one ever made a coloured picture of the “wild west wind”; but there are plenty of coloured pictures in which there is no mistaking its presence. We all believe in wireless telegraphy (now that it is an accomplished fact) which is, in itself, untranslatable into colour or line; but its mechanism can be photographed, and its results in the world of men and ships are in all the illustrated papers. Music, which is pure sound, is to some the surest path to the Reality behind this outward show things; yet to some at least of such music is indeed form and colour, even though the colours be beyond the rainbow. For in truth, everything worth believing in, all those things, those ideas, which renew the springs of our life, have form and they have colour. Even to the colour-blind one word differeth from another in glory.

This is no idle fancy, no mere subject for academic debate: it is the most practical subject in the world. For even as the body is fed not by food alone but by the living air, so is the spirit nourished not alone by right action but by inspiring ideas. Ideas are pictures; and the best ideas are coloured pictures.

Hence the great value of words. It is idle to speakof “words, idle words,” as though they were the transient froth on the permanent ocean of thought. They are the vehicle, the body of thought. If the thought be shallow or silly, the words will indeed be “idle.” But if the idea be inspiring the words will be the channel of that inspiration.

The greater part of this power in words is lost to us to-day. Everything tempts us to hurry over words. We talk too quickly to be able to pay that respect to words which they deserve; and we read the newspaper, the magazine, the novel, the play, the poem, with the same disastrous haste. We devour the words but lose their essence. Hence there is a grave danger that through this neglect we shut out one of the main streams by which our life must be fed if it is not to shrink into mere fretful existence.

There is a curious idea in some minds that fine language consists of long words difficult to understand. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Most of the great words—the words of power, as the old Kabalists called them—are short words, words in common use. And how common is the sound of them in the mouth of the preacher! Not long ago I heard an intelligent and cultured man reading one of the many beautiful passages from the English Bible:—

“Ye dragons, and all deeps;Fire and hail, snow and vapour;Stormy wind fulfilling his word;Mountains and all hills;Fruitful trees and all cedars, ...”

and he read it as though it were a draper's sale bill. And yet it needs but a very little imagination for such a passage to become a series of vivid pictures. Fire, hail, snow, vapour, hills, mountains, cedars, dragons and deeps—every word is “a word of power” if only there is no hurry, if only each word as it comes is given time to call up the picture of the real thing before the inward eye.

And you may hear children of fourteen and fifteen who have passed examinations in “English” reciteline after line of, say, Matthew Arnold'sThe Forsaken Mermanwith a glib self-assured colourlessness due solely to the fact that no teacher has ever taught them respect for simple words. And what simpler words could there be than these, for example—

“Where great whales come sailing by,Sail and sail, with unshut eye,Round the world, for ever and aye”?

Simple, common words; yet if there is that leisurely attention to each one as it comes what an exhilarating picture arises of the great sea-beasts, and of “the round ocean and the living air.”

I am not pleading for the stylist's concentration on words which exalts them above the things they body forth. The most vivid and beautiful description of dawn in the English language—

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