An old fisherman once told me that it was worth while going out sailing in bad, chilly weather, just for the fun of getting home again and taking a rest in a warm chimney-corner, and I have often thought that many people would find it worth while to fast once in a while, when they begin to complain that they cannot enjoy their meals. After a day’s exercise in the woods and mountains the plainest food tastes well. A supper of bread, milk and huckleberries tastes better to the poor Tennessee mountain boy, who has been out herding cows all day, than a banquet of thirty dishes tastes to a rich merchant who has not yet digested his last meal. There is no danger in an occasional fast, though some people seem to think it a misfortune to miss one of their three daily meals. There was a time when rich and poor thought it enough to eat one good meal a day. The old Romans and Greeks ate a biscuit and perhaps half a handful of dried fruit in the morning, and then did not eat again till they had finished their day’s work, when they took a bath, changed their dress, and then sat down to a good supper. An Indian hunter thinks nothing of going a day without any food at all. A few years ago an American physician thought it worth while to try how long a man could fast without hurting himself. People thought he was crazy, and told him he would kill himself in less than a week. He made no reply, and his friends changed their opinion when he had fasted forty days and nights. Few of those friends would have cared to try their own pluck in that manner, but they would certainly have been ashamed to complain of an accident that might lose them a dinner and oblige them to eat their principal meal in the evening. But though there can be no harm in a day’s fast, it is never safe to suffer for want of drinking water. The same doctor who passed nearly six weeks without a mouthful of food, took a sip of cold lemonade every few hours, and it is a curious fact that in warm weather a glass of water served with our dinner is by far the most important part of the meal. Hunger, or what we call a “good appetite,” often stops after the mealtime has passed without a chance of getting a mouthful of food, but thirst cannot be put off in that way, and becomes at last so intolerable that a starved traveler, after a three days’ journey in the desert, would give a wagon-load of food for a drink of cold water. FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D. WOULD AND SHOULD.