I immediately began to drink water with my meals in perfect trust and confidence, and—I continued to thrive like a green bay tree. When I was a boy, I was told that tomatoes were exceedingly bad; that they had no nutritive qualities, and that it was but a few short years since they had been called “love apples” and had rightly been considered poisonous. With unquestioning faith I refrained from eating the juicy vegetables and remained free from all the diseases that follow in their train. I had not tasted a tomato, and I did not know what I was losing. One day when feeling a little off my feed, a young doctor friend said, “What you need is the acid of a tomato.” With an unfaltering trust I approached a tomato and ate it and realized the many, many years that were irrevocably gone; years in which I might have eaten the succulent fruit—for a tomato is a fruit; there’s no question of it. After that day I made a point of eating tomatoes whenever I could and I remained free from the diseases that had been said to follow in their train. I blindly follow the dictum of the last doctor who speaks and it is to that fact that I attribute my good health. I read somewhere not long since that the best way to keep free from colds was to sit in draughts as much as possible and I believe there is a good deal of sound sense back of that dictum, but Ethel will not let me try the virtue of the thing. No doctor has told me that it is right to take long walks on an early morning empty stomach and so I have not done it, but I have an English friend who used to walk twenty miles or so to breakfast. The English are always walking twenty miles to somewhere, and look at them. A fine race! The Americans are not much given to walking, but look at them—a fine race! Everything is certainly for the best—always, everywhere. We walked around to the kitchen and found Minerva on her knees before the fire watching insufficient kindling feebly burn while James sat on the kitchen table swinging one long leg and teaching her a rag-time melody. He rose to his feet as we came in and gave us a hearty good morning and then burst into a good-natured laugh that showed all his beautiful white teeth. “Made an early start, sir.” “Yes, James. It isn’t absolutely necessary for rehearsals to begin quite so early,” said I. “It woke us up.” “There, now, Minerva, what did I tell you? I was sure they’d hear it.” “No question about your filling the church.” “’Deed I’m awful sorry,” said Minerva, “Wakin’ you so early, an’ the fire not kindled.”