"In continuing the observation further, I discovered that many of the foods that I was accustomed to take contained hard, insoluble ingredients or cottony fibre that got more and more cottony and refractory with mastication. In trying coffee, my favourite beverage, as you told me I might do if I handled it rightly in the mouth, I tasted it until it was absorbed or swallowed involuntarily just as you told me the expert wine-tasters and tea-tasters do. I sipped and enjoyed my small cup of coffee as I had never done before in my life, and knew afterwards that it had not hurt me as usual, as no immediate protest came from the stomach, which formerly had been the case. I slept the 'sleep of the just' that night, and awoke in fine form next morning. From that day to this I have not been troubled with indigestion, and during these five years I have not been sick a day or an hour or a moment, and have slept like a babe. I haven't kept my weight quite down where it ought to be for best comfort, but I have supported the burden with my general good health and digestion. My temptations to lapse have been enormous, for I have had the good fare of two continents thrown at me by most enticing invitation, and I have run the gantlet of extraordinary _menus_ without phasing, with the results I have recounted. "Do you remember the day of the public funeral of General Grant, when his tomb on the Riverside Drive--Morningside Heights--was dedicated? You remember that we had been invited to Mr. H----'s to witness the parade and take lunch? How we were caught on the wrong side of the procession on Fifth Avenue and were hurrying to get ahead of the column and across to the other side of the Avenue? Well! do you remember how we puffed and blowed when we had run a couple of blocks and how we were red in the face and nearly knocked up? We were both fat then and short-winded, and we never would have been able to get to our destination if I had not hypnotised a policeman and persuaded him to lead us across the Avenue like a pair of emergency hospital cases or disorderly arrests. "Since then you have had your experience of recovery as the result of your deliberate experiment made for a purpose, and I have had mine as the result of noting the improvement in you, and for all of which I owe you my life, whatever that may be worth.