He might have obtained some glimmering of the truth if he had placed a mirror in front of him as he dined, or even if he had only stopped to think. For he ate rapidly, almost ravenously, of every course that was set before him, bolting it down with scarcely any attempt at mastication, which the present style of preparing food renders only too easy. “He was bound to make a good dinner,” he said, as his business was of such an arduous and worrying nature that he rarely had time to get any lunch. At the conclusion of the meal he apologised for taking out of his pocket a box of digestive tablets. He was forced to have them, he explained, as he was a martyr to dyspepsia. Yet ten years before this man had been a strong, healthy athlete. Now he had become a wreck, and his life was a burden to him. Not only was he incapable of doing his work properly or of enjoying his pleasures, but he lived in a constant dread of a nervous breakdown. And the probability is that unless he has reformed his ways of eating that catastrophe has happened to him ere this. CHAPTER XI. FRESH AIR. The very title, “Fresh Air,” conjures up visions of wide-spreading moorlands and foam-flecked seas, of sunny dales and quiet trout-streams, of breezy golf links and bracing mountain-tops; of all the things, in fact, which we are going to revel in when we go for our next holiday. When we go for our next holiday! And what is to happen in the meantime? For fresh air is a daily, we might say an hourly, necessity, not a yearly luxury. The combustion on which the health so largely depends is always going on. The bodily engine never ceases running from the beginning to the end of life. Sometimes it is more active than at others, but even during sleep itself, though the muscles may be relaxed and motionless, the heart is acting, and the lungs must continue to do their work. The machinery of the body is never still, the furnaces are never out. Sometimes they are burning fiercely, at other times with a gentle glow. Yet no matter whether it is one or the other, it is necessary that the processes of combustion should be complete, and the purer the air that reaches the lungs, and the more there is of it, the more effectually will this end be attained. Send a tired, seedy-looking man into the open air for a whole day, and even if he only lies down or lounges about the whole time, you may notice the difference in his looks by the time evening has come. His eyes will be brighter and his complexion clearer, and the dragging sense of heaviness in his limbs will have disappeared. Instead of discomfort and nausea, he will have a good, healthy appetite. [Sidenote: Fresh air and the nervous system.]