THERE is a story of a little boy who was very fond of angling, and who one day told his grandfather that he had caught a fish as large as a horse.

“Look here, Tom,” said the old man, “don’t you know it’s wrong for a little boy like you to tell such a big untruth? You are not six years, are you?”

“No,” said Tommy; “I am only five, and I’ll not do it again. After this I’m going to tell only little bits of fish stories.”

That boy often reminds one of people who talk about being “temperate” and “moderate” in the use of things which they ought to let alone altogether. A little glass of strong drink, a little cigar, are just as certainly wrong as a little untruth.

But how can we know what is good or bad for the body? The answer is, that our body itself will tell us. The body has a conscience as well as the soul. Put your hand into a potful of warm water, and your hand will at once let you know if the water is too hot. Go out sleigh-riding in a light straw hat on a cold winter morning, and your ears will soon ask for a warmer cover. After a laborer has been hard at work for eight or ten hours, his body will ask for rest. Make a child sit down in a chair without moving for six hours, and its body will ask for exercise. Our body soon lets us know if a coat or a shoe is too tight, or if a burden is too heavy. And it can just as certainly be relied upon to warn us against unwholesome food. It is true that we can silence that voice of our body’s conscience. After a man has swallowed a good many glasses of bad drink or smoked a cigar every morning for a couple of weeks, he at last gets “used to it,” as we call it; his nature gets changed, and at last he is unable to let such things alone. But at the first trial our sense of taste will plainly warn us against unwholesome food and drink. Before an apple is ripe it tastes sour. The taste of over-ripe or spoiled fruit gets more and more disagreeable.

An Italian naturalist, during his travels in Southern Africa, noticed that a little pet monkey of his never made a mistake in choosing its food, and could tell poisonous herbs and berries from good ones the moment he tasted them. The traveler made that little creature his kitchen master, as he called it, and always let it try a bit of every kind of food that was offered to him for sale. “If Jocko ate a spoonful of honey and stretched out his hand for more,” he writes, “I was satisfied that it was worth buying; if the little chap grinned and flung the sample away, I felt sure that the bees must have gathered their honey from poisonous flowers. Jocko never made mistakes in such things, and that our own people blundered so often might be explained by the fact that we have blunted our sense of taste with strong drink and hot spices.”

A boy who has been brought up on perfectly wholesome food can tell injurious things almost as quick as that little monkey. He will dislike the taste of sharp pepper sauces, of pickles, of strong cheese, of spoiled meat, and will not be apt to mistake a bitter swamp berry for a huckleberry.

Our stomach also lets us know when we should stop eating. In that case, too, it is not safe to disregard the warnings of our bodily conscience. If a boy keeps eating, just to while time away, after he feels that he has had enough, and after his stomach has asked him again and again to stop, his nature at last changes, and he wants to be stuffing himself all the time. I knew a little chap of ten years who seemed to think it a pity to lose a chance for gorging himself, and who had to be watched like a tricky cat to keep him from slipping into his mother’s pantry and helping himself to all the good things in sight. On his way to school he would stop to buy a package of peanuts or pick up a pocketful of apples on the outside of an orchard, and when he came home for dinner he ate away as if nothing had happened. All his schoolmates called him “Glutton Joe.”

Such gluttons are apt to think that they are getting more fun out of life than other people. The truth is, that they hardly ever know an hour of real happiness. They feel dull and weary; they become too sluggish to play; they take no interest in their studies, and drop a new book or new paper after a short look at the pictures; they would rather not know the end of a pretty story than go to the trouble of reading it through. They feel drowsy as soon as the weather gets a little warm, but when they go to sleep their rest is broken by ugly dreams. Glutton Joe had no friends; he was so cross and lazy that nobody wanted him for a playmate.

An old fisherman once told me that it was worth while going out sailing in bad, chilly weather, just for the fun of getting home again and taking a rest in a warm chimney-corner, and I have often thought that many people would find it worth while to fast once in a while, when they begin to complain that they cannot enjoy their meals. After a day’s exercise in the woods and mountains the plainest food tastes well. A supper of bread, milk and huckleberries tastes better to the poor Tennessee mountain boy, who has been out herding cows all day, than a banquet of thirty dishes tastes to a rich merchant who has not yet digested his last meal. There is no danger in an occasional fast, though some people seem to think it a misfortune to miss one of their three daily meals. There was a time when rich and poor thought it enough to eat one good meal a day. The old Romans and Greeks ate a biscuit and perhaps half a handful of dried fruit in the morning, and then did not eat again till they had finished their day’s work, when they took a bath, changed their dress, and then sat down to a good supper. An Indian hunter thinks nothing of going a day without any food at all. A few years ago an American physician thought it worth while to try how long a man could fast without hurting himself. People thought he was crazy, and told him he would kill himself in less than a week. He made no reply, and his friends changed their opinion when he had fasted forty days and nights. Few of those friends would have cared to try their own pluck in that manner, but they would certainly have been ashamed to complain of an accident that might lose them a dinner and oblige them to eat their principal meal in the evening.

But though there can be no harm in a day’s fast, it is never safe to suffer for want of drinking water. The same doctor who passed nearly six weeks without a mouthful of food, took a sip of cold lemonade every few hours, and it is a curious fact that in warm weather a glass of water served with our dinner is by far the most important part of the meal. Hunger, or what we call a “good appetite,” often stops after the mealtime has passed without a chance of getting a mouthful of food, but thirst cannot be put off in that way, and becomes at last so intolerable that a starved traveler, after a three days’ journey in the desert, would give a wagon-load of food for a drink of cold water.

Felix L. Oswald, M. D.