My patient's bowels gave no hint of their locality until the eighteenth day, when they acted with little effort; on the twenty-fourth day again in a perfect way, and thereafter daily. The mind became ecstatic through perfect relief from mental and physical depression; there were no wants for other than those simple foods, and at the end of a month he left me with new views as to Nature's power of selection to meet her needs and of the vast utility of using both time and food to dissipate hunger. The waste with most people is so small that the cost of the food, the cost of time in preparation, could be reduced to a startling fraction if the need could be actually known, and the pleasures of the palate increased by an inverse ratio. There is no redemption for women on the earth who have the care of kitchens except through simpler, smaller meals--meals so very far apart that there shall be a maximum of the hunger-sense of relish and the resulting maximum of power to convert them into tissues instinct with life. It may be that the waste is so very trifling, especially with brain-workers, that one may be a vegetarian, fruitarian, or even an eater of pork, without positive violence to practical physiology. There is this further very practical consideration, that when Nature is so fairly dealt with that she can speak in natural tones she will call only for those foods easily available along geographical lines. There is this to be said about fruits, that all those containing acids decompose the gastric juice, as they all contain potash salts in union with fruit acids. As soon as they reach the stomach the free hydrochloric acid of the gastric juice unites with the potash, setting the fruit acid free to irritate the stomach. There is never any desire for acid fruits through real hunger, especially those of the hyperacid kinds: they are simply taken to gratify that lower sense--relish. The tropical fruits are without acids, and therefore are well adapted to a class of people who have only the least use for muscle and brains. Acid fruits can only be taken with apparent impunity by the young and old, who can generate gastric juice copiously. Because of the general impression that they are healthful and no tax, human stomachs are converted into cider-mills at will, regardless of between meal-times. By their ravishing flavor and apparent ease of digestion apples still play an important part in the "fall of man" from that higher estate, the Eden without its dyspepsia. What shall we eat? The fig-leaved savage under his bread-fruit tree, the fur-clad Eskimo in his ice-hut, need not be asked: the needed food is in all due supply with little cost of muscle and less of mind--and he has no mental condition that can disturb the digestion.