More than other peoples we Americans have faith in short-cuts--short-cuts to health, happiness, knowledge, and, of course, success. I can remember a period when the one passionate avocation of American life appeared to be the search for the Perfect Breakfast Food. If only it could be found, the problems of existence would at once be solved; through its daily consumption not only would the body become strong and beautiful, but the soul, too, one felt, would be healed, and all at last be indeed right with the world. Then anaemic monthly magazines were enriched with illustrated advertisements of a hundred strange breakfast foods, the inventor--no, discoverer--of each of which claimed, and perhaps believed, that in it he had found that perfect one. Some swore by this one, some by that; but all felt secretly that they had not yet found exactly IT, but that IT was there somewhere, just around the corner, waiting for them. There was such fervour in the quest that it was not even vulgar; it had a mystical side, like the mediaeval search for the philosopher’s stone. And so, for a while, millions every morning ate, hopefully, reverently, religiously, weird concoctions--of flax-seed, of malt, of hops, of every known grain, kernels shot through a gun, kernels exploded by incredible heat--until at last in a nation-wide wave of indigestion the quest collapsed, like the Crusades. It was a striking phenomenon, and, like all great, popular, idealistic movements, faintly pathetic; but it does not stand alone. Before it, history tells, there had been a period of even more dangerous faith in patent medicines, and, since, there has been who does not know what?--starvation, careful mastication, Coué-ism, and a score of other short-cuts to health and happiness. Living abroad and returning to America every two or three years, I am always struck, on arrival there, by two things: first, that the one great secret of life has been discovered; second, that the secret of year-before-last has been forgotten as completely as the popular song of its period. The last time I was there, the secret, the master-word, appeared to be Metabolism. I don’t know what Metabolism is; but I was assured that it explained everything, would (eventually) solve every problem of health. Our faith in short-cuts is immense. If you take twelve--or is it twenty-four?--lessons of a correspondence school, you will double, or triple, or quadruple your salary automatically; if you read Wells’s _Outline_ you will immediately know all about history; if you read the _Book of Etiquette_ you will at once become suave, well-bred, and will know how to entertain your employer at dinner in a manner certain to be advantageous to you thereafter; and so on.