The great thing about the fast is that it sets you a new standard of health. You have been accustomed to worrying along somehow; but now you discover your own possibilities, and thereafter you are not content until you have found some way to keep that virginal state of stomach which one possesses for a month or two after a successful fast. It must mean, of course, many changes in your life, if you really wish to keep it. It means the giving up of tobacco and alcohol, and a too sedentary life, and steam-heated rooms; above all else, it means giving up self-indulgent eating. A couple of years ago my wife and myself made the acquaintance of a young lady patient in a sanatorium, who was in a much run-down condition, anæmic and nervous. We persuaded her to take a fast of five or six days, and afterwards take the milk diet, as the result of which she went back to her home in Virginia with what she described as "smiles and dimples and curves and bright eyes." She was so enthusiastic about the cure that she proceeded to apply it to all her family and her friends; and some time afterwards she wrote my wife a most diverting account of her adventures. After some persuasion I secured her permission to quote her letter, having duly omitted all the names. It makes clear the thorny path which the fasting enthusiast has to travel in this world. I will try in a very limited space of time to tell you what keeps me a slave here at home. I got Mr. X---- down from ---- to put papa and mamma on the fasting cure--papa had a bad case of grippe--mamma had indigestion. My oldest married brother is in dreadful health, and his wife and baby are not well. I wore myself nearly out trying to get them well, and at the same time trying to pick up some threads of long neglected social duties. People were beginning to call me "stuck-up" (horrid vulgar term), so unless I wanted to make enemies of the wives and daughters of papa's and brother's business friends, I had to go to a few parties and pay some long-neglected calls. I did it all, and then decided to have Mr. X---- come to help me. I got papa and mamma and M---- and _her baby_(!) on a fast--and then woe is me--I had to get them off again! They had various and alarming symptoms due to their ignorance of the methods, and the wild interest of the town medicine-men. The family doctor gave me a "straight talk" and asked me if I was going to try _to kill my father and mother_. Papa would not give up his cigarettes, and a "toddy" now and then. M----'s baby lost four pounds while his mother was fasting. All the doctors' wives came to call, and beset me with questions--and I had the d---- of a time. But I stood by my guns. When the overfed, self-indulgent family all got to vomiting at once, my hands were full, and I nearly had nervous prostration before I got order out of the bedlam I had stirred up.