adjusted to the need of oxygen. Now, sleep and rest, after severe exertion, ought to be refreshing.

"Blest be the man, said he of yore,

Who erst the famous Quixote's target bore.
Blest be the man who first taught sleep,
Throughout our wearied frames to creep."

There is the night then of perfect rest to muscle and mind. Does this refresh? You should be refreshed by this experience during which you have been oblivious of all care or woe of mind; or are you so exhausted by it, that you cannot go about your affairs without a filling of the stomach? What is sleep for if not to refresh? When should we be so able to go about our affairs as when this refreshing has been most perfect in all its processes?

Readers, listeners, there is no natural hunger in the morning after a night of restful sleep, because there has been no such degree of cell destruction as to create a demand for food at the ordinary hour of the American breakfast. Sleep is not a hunger-causing process. To reinforce this statement and the reasons behind it, is the experience of thousands who have abandoned the morning meal, and in a short time lost all hint of a need of it. This could not have been had there been a need, for Nature is imperious, exacting; and it is not in the line of possibility that she will permit any getting used to less food than she requires to preserve her physiological balance. She easily permits you to skip that meal you do not need so soon after the refreshing sleep and which you always eat from habit; but later she will call you to account if you give less than her demands.

I will now leave this most interesting point in our discussion until I can go back and bring my thread of history up to where I can make an attack upon the

breakfast all along the line. Thus far I have been content to advise the "sick and afflicted" only.

I must tell you of an evolution that took place at my own breakfast-table. As there were no apparent reasons why any of my family should adopt my plan, not a suggestion was offered to any of them that it should be done.

During the winter following its adoption, I sat at the morning table and sipped my coffee while my three sturdy boys enjoyed their steaming cakes fresh from a smoking griddle, with such unction of relish as to always make me feel like sighing with regret that I could not be a boy again with a boy's powers of digestion. These boys would begin to break their fast on this kind of "bread of life," and end it with the same, for no other food was wanted, nor was there room for other kinds. The last mouthful was the cork to fullness complete.

Now it had not escaped my attention that this was the only relished meal of the day, the others being encountered with a dainty, eccentric appetite, and that the one morning meal of the week when they were not hungry was on Mondays, when there were no hot cakes to entice stomach-packing. On these mornings the three of them would not take as much of the less enticing food as one would dispose of on all other mornings. This did not prevent their appearance at the dinner table with no lack of mental or physical energy for the task of eating such a dinner as was eaten on no other day of the week.

The following winter, at my suggestion, this enticing food was made the second course of the noon meal in order that there should be due variety in the bill of fare, as well as to avoid the taxing of the stomach with so much food of difficult digestion. On the start

there would be the advantage of not over-taxing in the morning, as the morning meal was so plain as to prohibit possibilities of gluttony. This plan worked like a charm. The breakfast at once began to decline in interest. Without a hint of suggestion the wife got down to the foreign breakfast, and the boys began to be content with "bread alone." Occasionally the wife would be content with coffee alone, and then she would get a headache, and add to the next morning meal. Occasionally the oldest son would skip his morning meal entirely, but he was always on time for his dinner to restore the lost balance. And the second boy gradually cut in his breakfast.

As this evolution went on so did the general cheer of the entire family increase. There was a luxury of relish in those dinners, not only on account of the absence of eccentricity of tastes, but in the higher social cheer that most abundantly rewarded for a fast that was without ever any taxing of endurance or even a hint of starvation.

And it was also very noticeable that apples, pears and peaches, that are "so healthful," that they can always be eaten with impunity, had suffered a material loss in their tempting power. They did not care for them in the forenoon, because the light breakfast so satisfied every physical want that there was little temptation to partake; and the noon meal was so enjoyed and so thoroughly digested as to prevent a morbid craving for the acid fruits which are always considered so healthful, that they can be made an additional load to any stomach, no matter how overloaded already, and with no evil results.

With higher digestive power, and the habitually relished dinner there resulted such habitual freedom from morbid cravings that all fruits, no matter how

healthful, lost their power to add a small meal between the two regular meals, and hence resulted robust, sustained health.

This evolution went on until the breakfast abolished itself, and without any hint that it should be done from higher authority. Except in my own case the frequent taxings in nights of professional care made the morning cup as a gift of the gods. The sons were never permitted to acquire the need of tea or coffee.

There was always the same self-abolished breakfast in the kitchen and always by evolution. No kitchenmaid ever served who did not of her own free will get down to an ability to do the hardest forenoon's work of each week with more ease, power and comfort, with a stomach void of food, than ever was done with a breakfast in it.

As for the sons they were always able to cope with their fellows in all taxing recreations, no matter how severe, with never a hint of faintness; and were always able to approach the dinner table with the deliberation of old men. There were never any symptoms of nervous, impatient, exhaustive hunger, and they never failed to sit by until such meals were eaten as an empty, rested stomach only ever invites. This regular experience opened up the question of difference between normal and abnormal hunger; and it opened up a most interesting and important fact, as satisfactory as important. A fact that when those boys were able to put the relished first meal of the day into the rested, empty stomach, I need have no apprehension of attacks of disease for an indefinite time.

Now, with my attention attracted to this evolution, with the highest possible human interest in its possible danger, and with such marked results for good, could I do other than advise others to "go to" and do likewise?

LECTURE XIII.

EVOLUTION OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE CONTINUED-HOW TO GET AN APPETITE-WHEN, WHAT, AND HOW TO EAT, DULY CONSIDERED.

My Friends the Readers :

Since we met last you have been doing some thinking. You took your evening meal of yesterday with more care. For once in your lives you entered upon sleep with an idea that it might be well to let the stomach as well as other muscles have a rest during the night. Your sleep was not so profound as you expected because, there being no digestive work, the brain was not affected by the torpid influence that attends the digestion of a large meal. But the sleep you all got was so restful that you awoke refreshed, and you decided that after so many hours of rest and sleep you ought to be refreshed and not hungry; and though at the usual time you had an attack of habit want, that seemed to indicate a hot breakfast, you resolutely met the attack without yielding, and so, for the first time, have appeared before me with empty stomachs, and will therefore be able to appropriate whatever I may offer that can be vitalized, with more power of reception and retention than you have ever realized at former lectures.

You entered upon this morning's fast with a decided advantage over me when I began mine, in that you are aware that it is absolutely safe, so far as the integrity of the brain is concerned; that you could prolong it