Is a Good Breakfast Necessary? Yes

1901

A good breakfast is the physical basis of a day's work. The American breakfast, regarded with so much horror on the European continent, has contributed largely to make the nation what it is today. It enabled our forefathers to do an amount of work which it appalls foreigners to contemplate.

As a rule there is something wrong with the man or with his habits if he cannot eat a good breakfast. A man who works at high tension all through the morning hours without this substantial foundation is working entirely upon his nerves. That means disordered nutrition and sooner or later bankruptcy and collapse.

If a man gets up in the morning with a bad taste and no inclination for food, it is because his system is full of waste and his circulation of obstructions. Let him make a radical change in his habits and train his digestive organs to accommodate a nourishing morning meal. — Medical Brief.

He Gets No Pie or Custard

1919

Such Is Hubby's Plea in Cross-bill for Divorce.

FINDLAY, Ohio — It was all right for the wife of Larson L. Brown to take hubby's pay envelope every Saturday and out of the contents pay a premium on the life insurance of her former husband, but when Mrs. Brown fed Larson side meat and boiled potatoes about 365 meals each year then he balked. This was learned when Brown's cross petition to his wife's petition for a divorce was filed. Brown intimated that a little pie and cup custard would have appeased things.

Setting the Pace

1910

"Pacemaker at a banquet is what I should call the unique job," said the city salesman. "I met a man the other day who holds that title among the artistic eaters of the town.

"He doesn't make any money by it directly, but it pays for most of his meals. He got the job through his ability to chew at just the right tempo.

"He doesn't lag, he doesn't bolt. At all big dinners where persons of different habits are brought together some one with an even jaw movement who can set the pace in eating facilitates the progress of the meal.

"This man is not labeled pacemaker at those affairs, yet his air of knowing the polite tempo in mastication impresses the other diners and they try to imitate him. Laggards hurry, the swift delay. Waiters keep an eye on him, because they have been told to, and when he finishes a course they clear the table."

Most Men Write Poor English

1905

An observant student of daily history as recorded in the newspapers takes now a kindlier view of errors in "newspaper English" than before the recent excitement concerning the vice crusade had arisen.

"I have heard all sorts of excuses about the occasional bad English one sees in newspapers, the hurry with which it is written, and that kind of thing," he says; "but I never gave the arguments much thought until I read the correspondence brought forth from men not hurried and of undoubted education, by the recent discussion. Some of the notes which have thus passed have been practically unintelligible in just these spots where a clear and ambiguous meaning was most vital to the point involved. These epistles must certainly have been studied by their writers — at least there must have been time for such study — but they read as though they were dashed off in a moment. In addition to actual errors, some of them fail utterly to establish their arguments because of the forceful way in which they are expressed."


Eat Meatless Meals

A prosperous physician was lunching at his club the other day at a table adjoining that at which sat one of his patients, says the Chicago Inter Ocean. He ordered English plum pudding as a finish to his meal, and remarked as he attacked it, that he would not eat it except at a noon meal, when he knew he would get no bad results from its richness.

The lady thought it a good time to secure information without the customary fee, and asked a few questions on food. "The habit of placing the heaviest meal of the day at its close is responsible for a deal of digestive trouble, with its train of disease," he said. "It may be old fashioned to dine at noon, but it is healthful, and that counts for everything. It is a practice among many physicians to have a midday dinner and a supper in which no meat figures, but stewed fruit is a feature."

Lives On Five Cents a Day

1901

Indiana Laborer Thrives on Exclusive Diet of Oatmeal

William Hamlin, a laborer, of Mishawaka, Ind., employed in very active work, and who spent the summer as a laborer in digging sewers and laying water-mains, has subsisted throughout the summer and fall on five cents a day, and is still continuing the experiment. Mr. Hamlin selected oatmeal for his diet, paying two cents a pound therefor, and consuming two and a half pounds a day, or seventeen and one-half pounds a week of seven days, at a total cost of thirty-five cents.

Hamlin's daily bill of fare since last summer has consisted of the following menu: Breakfast, plenty of hot drinking water and three-quarters of a pound of oatmeal; dinner, plenty of drinking water and one pound of oatmeal. For supper he takes a hot or cold bath, sometimes only a foot bath, three-quarters of a pound of oatmeal and plenty of drinking water. Mr. Hamlin says that after eating supper he often feels frisky as a colt. Whenever his appetite becomes rebellious and his stomach seems to crave other food he simply lays the oatmeal away on the shelf until the appetite returns and the stomach becomes subjugated.

Several citizens of this place, acquainted with Mr. Hamlin's eccentricities, vouch for the accuracy as detailed, and assert that Mr. Hamlin is as well satisfied with his present physical and mental vigor that he is not desirous of returning to the old order of things.