It may be taken for granted that John Cheever kept an eye on this
fellow. He was treated as a favored guest, his host accepting his
theory and putting it in practice with him that same night. Toward
morning he was comfortably settled in the library with an interesting
book to while away an hour when his entertainer made the rounds to look
after the fires. Returning to the library, the fireman found the
theorist sound asleep in Dr. Ripley’s big armchair. Giving the man a
vigorous shake, John Cheever politely requested him not to snore quite
so loud as he was disturbing the family. After that there was nothing
for the sleepless person to do but wait for Gerrish to take him away.
Bonico and I trapped another fakir soon afterward though by accident
rather than design. This specimen was a genius inspired by the belief
that cooking is the source of all the ills that flesh is heir to. He
lectured us on the folly of eating boiled and roasted and toasted food,
declaring that we must subsist on nature’s products as she gives them
to us, just as other animals do. Nature affords an abundant supply of
grains and fruits and nuts and roots, and it is our place not to change
these things by fire but to take them as they are offered to us.
As heretofore noted, our fare was simple enough, and after our spare
meals there was very little left on the tables to be cleaned away. What
small leavings of scraps and crumbs there happened to be, were brushed
onto a big salver and placed outside the kitchen door. My chum and I
had to go out in the evening and take this salver out to the chicken
run behind the barn. We had seen the dietetic reformer wandering about
the place for a day or two, constantly chewing wheat which he carried
in a bag hanging conspicuously from his belt. He did not come into the
dining room or take regular meals, claiming to be sufficiently
nourished by the raw wheat he masticated so industriously. We had not
noticed him especially—no one took much notice of pretentious
faddists—but on going around to the back door for the chicken-feed one
evening Bonico and I recognized the wheat-muncher bending over the
salver eagerly picking up whatever bits and pieces he could find to
eat. He was so engaged in this employ that we did not disturb him but
quietly slipped away and reported the case to John Cheever. That
guardian of the peace immediately trotted off to the kitchen, gathered
up a plate of food and rushed out to the diet reformer, exclaiming:
“Here is your supper! No one need go hungry at Brook Farm.” That was
the last of this particular specimen; but there were others, so many
others that they would have been intolerable but for the watchful care
that protected us from too troublesome invasions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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