 Lee Den and Preface of the Garden of Folly. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by David Wales, The Garden of Folly by Stephen Leacock. Lee Den. This old world works hard and gets no richer, thanks hard and gets no wiser, worries much and gets no happier. It casts off old errors to take on new ones, laughs at ancient superstitions, and shivers over modern ones. It is at best but a Garden of Folly whose chattering gardeners move a moment among the flowers waiting for the sunset. Confucius or Tutankhamun, I forget which, Preface concerning humor and humorists. I do not claim that this preface has anything in particular to do with the book that follows. Readers who desire to do so and are mean enough may safely omit either the book or the preface without serious loss. I admit that the preface is merely inserted in order to give me a chance to expound certain views on the general nature of humor and on the general aspects of the person called the humorist. There is a popular impression that a humorist or comedian must need to be sad, that in appearance he should be tall, lantern-jawed and cadaverous, and that his countenance should wear a woe-begone expression calculated to excite laughter. The loss of his hair is supposed to increase his market value, and if he is as bald as a boiled egg with a shell off, his reputation is assured. This, I think, springs from the fact that in the past, at least, people did not propose to laugh with the humorist, but at him. They laughed in an apologetic way. They considered him simply too silly. He wrung a laugh from them in spite of their better selves. In other words, till our own time, laughter was low. Our dull forefathers had no notion of its intellectual meaning and reach. The court jester, referred too heartily as yawn poor fool, was most likely the cleverest man around the court, and yet historical novels are filled with little touches such as this. The king sang wearily upon his couch. My lady said, I am a weary, my mind is distraught. In faith I am like to become as deathless as yawn poor fool. Now, as a matter of fact, the king was probably what we should call in North America a great big boob, and the poor fool, if he had lived with us, would be either on the staff of life or punch or at the head of a university, whichever he pleased. A generation or so ago, the idea of the melancholy humorist got a lot of cooperation from the fact that some of the best humorists of the time were in actual reality of a woe be gone appearance. The famous Bill Nye was tall, mournful, and exceedingly thin, a fact which he exploited to the full. He used to tell his hearers that there had been a request for him to come to them again and to appear in broadsword combat with a parallel of latitude. The still more celebrated Artemis Ward was also of a shambling and woe be gone habit. His melancholy face and feeble frame bespoke in reality the ravages of a mortal disease. The laughter that greeted his shambling appearance and his dimmer gestures appear in retrospect as cruel mockery. The humor of Ward's public appearance, which captivated the London of 60 years ago, is turned now to pathos. But Ward and Nye are only two examples of the melancholy comedian, a thing familiar through the ages. Yet in spite of all such precedents and admitting that exceptions are exceptions, I cannot but think that the true manner of the comedian is that of smiles and laughter. If I am to be amused, let me see on the stage before me not the lantern jaws of sorrow, but a genial countenance shaped like the map of the world, lit with spectacles and illuminated with a smile. Let me hear the comedian's own laughter come first, and mine shall follow readily enough, laughing not at him, but with him. I admit that when the comedian adopts this mode, he runs the terrible risk of being the only one to laugh at his own fun. This is indeed dreadful. There is no contempt so bitter as that of the man who will not laugh for the man who will. The poor comedian's merriment withers under it, and his laughter turns to a sad and forced contortion pitiful to witness. But it is a risk that he must run. And there is no doubt that if he can really and truly laugh, his audience will laugh with him. His only difficulty is in doing it. This much, however, I will admit that if a man has a genuine sense of humor, he is apt to take a somewhat melancholy or at least a disillusioned view of life. Humor and disillusionment are twin sisters. Humor cannot exist alongside of eager ambition, brisk success, and absorption in the game of life. Humor comes best to those who are down and out or who have at least discovered their limitations and their failures. Humor is essentially a comforter, reconciling us to things as they are in contrast to things as they might be. This is why I think such a great number of people are cut off from having any very highly developed sense of humor. If I had to make a list of them, I would put at the head all eminent and distinguished people whose lofty position compels them to take themselves seriously. The list would run something like this. One. The Pope of Rome. I doubt if he could have a very keen sense of fun. Two. Archbishops and the more dignified clergy. Sense of humor. None. Three. Imperers, Kaisers, Sars, Emirs, Emus, Shakes, etc., etc., absolutely none. Four. Captains of industry. I mean the class that used to be called nation makers and are now known as profiteers. Atrophied. Five. Great scholars, thinkers, philanthropists, martyrs, reformers, and patriots. Petrified. As against this I would set a list of people who would probably show a sense of humor brought to its full growth. One. Deposed kings. Two. Rejected candidates for election to a national legislature. Three. Writers whose work has been refused by all the publishers. Four. Inventors who have lost their patents, actors who have been hooted off the stage, painters who can't paint, and speaking broadly all the unemployed and the unsuccessful. I have no doubt that this theory, like most of the things that I say in this book, is an overstatement. But I have always found that the only kind of statement worth making is an overstatement. A half-truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries further. End of The Dinn and Preface. Chapter One of The Garden of Folly by Stephen Leacock. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter One, The Secrets of Success, as revealed at $1.50 a revelation. Note, this opening chapter deals with the secrets of material success and shows how easily it can be achieved. Indeed, anybody who is willing to take a brief correspondence course can achieve it in a few weeks. What follows here is based upon the best and newest manuals on the subject, and every word is guaranteed. The new race of big men and big women. Dear friend reader, for you will not mind my calling you this or both of this, for I feel already that we are friends. Are we not? Don't you? Let us sit down and have a comfortable get-together visit and talk things over. Are you aware that there is a big movement going on in this country and that a lot of big-hearted men and ever so many big women are in it? Perhaps not. Then let me try to tell you all about it, and the way in which the world is being transformed by it. No, don't suggest sending me any money. I don't want it. Neither I nor any of these big men and women who are working on this thing want money. We all take coupons, however, and if you care to cut out any coupons from any newspaper or magazine and send them to me, I shall be glad to get them. But remember, sending a coupon that pledges you to nothing. It does not in any way bring you within reach of the law, and you may cut out as many as you like. Only a little while ago a young boy, scarcely more than a man, came into my office in great distress and in evident remorse. What have I done, he moaned? What is it? I asked. I have cut out a coupon, he said, ringing his hands, and sent it in. To where? I asked. To department B, the success editor, box 440J Phoenix, Arizona. My dear friend, I said, cutting out a coupon pledges you to nothing. He left my office, after in vain offering me money, a new being. I may say that he is now at the head of one of the biggest dried prune businesses in Kalamazoo. In other words, that boy had found the secret of success. A chance remark had suddenly put him in the path of opportunity. My dear reader, you may be all a knowing and exactly the position of that young man. You may be, like him, on the very verge of opportunity. Like him, you may need only a friendly shove to put you where you belong. Now, this movement that I am in, along with these big women, etc. that I spoke of, is a movement for putting success within reach of all, even of the dullest. You need not despair merely because you are dull. That's nothing. A lot of these big men in the movement were complete nuts before they came in. Perhaps it is a new idea to you that success can be deliberately achieved. Let me assure you, on the contrary, that achieving it is the only way to get it. I wonder, for example, if the thought has ever occurred to you, that you would like your salary raised. If so, nothing is more simple. Read the chapters which follow, and your salary will be raised before you finish them. After having studied the literature of this big movement for success, I can tell you of hundreds of thousands of men and women in this country whose salaries have been raised beyond recognition. What would you say, for example, to earning $63 a week without leaving home and using only your spare time? And that, too, had an agreeable occupation needing no preparation and no skill. Do you want to do it? Well, that is what young Edward Bean Ed, kid Ed, they call him, is doing right at this minute in Houston, Texas. Or what do you say to cleaning up half a million cold in a fortnight on the sale of an article indispensable to every home in the country? Easily understood and never out of order, patent applied for. Well, that was what was done by Calicut Johnson. Cal Johnson, they generally call him, at least if they're busy or millionaire Johnson or lucky Johnson, they call him a lot of names like that. You can see his picture and have the papers in the country. Bull Johnson, he's often called. You must have seen him. Well, here was a man, this Cal or this Bull, who never knew till he was 41 years old that he had personality. And then all of a sudden, one day of a stop, I'll tell you later on all about this bull or Buffalo Johnson. They often call him Buffalo. I merely say that at present, Buffalo or buff is at the head of one of the biggest nuts syndicates in El Paso. Or how would you like to imagine yourself becoming the head of one of the biggest mercantile concerns in the country? Would you have any use for it? I mean, would it make a hit with you? If so, I shall have to tell you presently about Robert J. Rubberhart bulldog Bob. They usually call him. It occurred to Bob one day that 85% of his efficiency was being squandered in. Oh, but no, I'd better keep it. Suffice it to say that you can see in the back pages of almost any of the current magazines, a picture of Bob at his mahogany desk in his office in that mercantile firm. He is pointing his finger right at his tenographer's eye and underneath him is written, this man earns $10 a minute. Well, that's Bob. He has cut out the waste of his efficiency and he has made good. But talking of bulldog Bob and the way he made good reminds me of a lot of other cases which I have met in my study of this big movement of men, yes, and of women who have made good. Perhaps you don't realize, reader, that no matter if a man is a long way down, almost down and out, he can still come back and make good. If a man has got sufficient pep and grit not to let the sand get joked out of him, he will come back every time. I am thinking here, especially, oh, as no doubt you are, of the instance of the honorable E final upshot. Now one of the leading men, one of the big men in the Senate of Nicaragua. Yet there was a man who had been nearly beaten out by fate. Health gone, friends gone, memory gone. He couldn't even have remembered his friends if he had kept them. Money gone, everything in fact, except that somewhere away down in that man was sand. And so one day, just by chance, Ed, his friends now always call him Honest Ed, saw in a paper, but don't let spoil the story. In any case, the real point is that men like Buff Johnson and Bulldog Bob and the honorable final upshot have got personality. That's it. Some of them had it from the start but didn't know it. You may be in that class. Concealed in these men was an unsuspected asset like the jewel in the toad of which Shakespeare speaks. It may be in you. And having personality, they set to work to develop themselves. They built up their efficiency. They studied their bodies. They took exercises which gave them constitutions like ostriches. They eliminated waste. They chewed their food for hours before they used it. Realizing that a ferruginous diet breaks down the tissues and sets up a subterfuge of gas throughout the body, they took care to combine in their diet a proper proportion of explosives. Having grasped the central fact that the glory of a man's strength is in his hair, these people, by adopting a system of rubbing, easily learned in six lessons and involving nothing more than five minutes of almost hysterical fun every morning, succeeded in checking the falling of the follicles or capillary bases of the hair itself. In short, as one of the greatest of them has said, hair power is brain power. As with personality and efficiency, so with memory, these men of the class of which we are speaking grasped the idea that memory means money. To gain it, they adopted a simple formula easily learned in six lessons without sending money, first invented by the ancient Aztecs, but now made available for everybody by the splendid efforts of the famous Dr. Allforce. The doctor whose picture shows him to be a GDM of Kansas is often called, presumably by his friends, the wizard of mind power. He is a man of whom we shall have a lot to say. Undoubtedly, the man has psychic power. Whether or not it is the self-same psychic power enjoyed by ancient Chaldeans and the Magi, who make the Magi water, is a point on which we must not try to pronounce. But the man certainly has it, and no doubt it was for that that Kansas gave him his GDM. The doctor claims that memory can be built up by a rearrangement of the colloid particles of the human brain. So convinced is the doctor of the validity of this daring claim that he offers a personal guarantee of $100, $100 for anybody disproving it to his satisfaction. Thus far no single professor of any of the colleges, all known to be a feat, has come forward to challenge this daring piece of scientific prophylaxis. In short, as the doctor himself says, hypothesis is truth. But we must not talk of the doctor too much. We shall have plenty to say of him in his place. Just remember him as the man who does not forget. We only mention him here in this connection as one of the big men whose ideas are reshaping the globe. Indeed, the doctor himself has gone on record with the words, I can reshape your head. But even all that we have said does not exhaust the scope of this great movement, which is building up a new race of men and women. There are bigger things yet. Have you ever thought of the large place that love plays in this world? Perhaps not. You may be too big a boob to have thought about it. And yet it is a thing about which every well-constituted man and every well-constructed woman ought to think. If you have hitherto been clean outside of our great movement toward the new life and the new success, you have probably never read the booklet obtainable anywhere or to be had by cutting out a coupon entitled How to Choose a Mate. Apart from its obvious usefulness at sea, this is a little book that should be studied by every young man and woman in the land. It is written by a man whose name, of course, you know, Dr. O. Salubrez Med Ms. Wash. He practically gives it away. It may never have occurred to you how many men in picking a mate or a life companion, or even a wife, make a bad pick. There are ever so many cases on record where serious dissatisfaction arises with the selection which has been made. With so many to choose from, this seems unnecessary. If you will study the work of Dr. Salubrez, you will see that he makes the bold claim that men and women are animals, and they should mate with the same care as is shown by the lobster, the lizard, and the graminiferous mammalia. But for the moment, we need to follow the Dr. no farther. The essential idea which arises from what we have said above is that a new race of men and women is emerging under our eyes. These people like Cal Johnson and Dr. Salubrez and Dr. Allforce and the Honorable Final Upshot are a new set of beings, alive with personality, using 100% of their efficiency, covered with glossy hair, rich in its natural oil, forgetting nothing, earning $63 a week at occupations, which fill only their leisure time. These people are rapidly inheriting the earth. As Dr. Blank himself has put it, the future will belong to those who own it. Do you want then, reader, and I am asking you for the last time, to be in this movement or out of it? Or no, let me put it in the striking way phrased by Allforce, can you afford to be out of it? A chat on personality, what it is, and how to get it. Let us therefore proceed to study out this question quietly and systematically, taking nothing for granted. We have said above that personality is the greatest thing in the world, but now let us ask ourselves, how do we know that personality is the greatest thing in the world? From what corollaries do we draw this hypothesis and is such an innuendo justified? In other words, who says so? Our answer to this is very simple. The greatest men in the world, those that is to say, who draw the largest salaries, do so by their personality. Ask any truly great man how he made all his money, and he will always tell you the same thing. The bigger the man is, the more loudly he will say it. The other day I had a few minutes conversation, I couldn't afford more, with one of the biggest priced men in this country. To what, I asked, do you attribute your own greatness? And he answered without hesitation, to myself. Yet this is the man who has the reputation of being the second biggest consumer of crude rubber in this country. He may do it, and he may not, but he has that reputation. I ask another man, a large consumer of adjustable bicycle parts, how much he thought he owed of his present commanding position to education. He answered emphatically, nothing. Something in his tone made me believe him. Now the common element in all these men is personality. Each one of them has a developed, balanced, nicely adjusted, well hung personality. You feel that as soon as such a man is in your presence. When he enters a room, you are somehow aware that he has come in. When he leaves, you realize that he's gone out. As soon as he opens his mouth, you know that he is speaking. When he shuts his mouth, you feel that he has stopped. Until the recent discoveries of the success movement, it was not known that personality could be acquired. We know now that it can. For the acquirement of personality, the first thing needed is to get into harmony with yourself. You may think that this is difficult, but a little practice will soon show you how. Make the effort, so far as you can, to set up a bilateral harmony between your inner and your outer ego. When you get this done, start and see what you can do to extend yourself in all directions. This is a little hard at first, but the very difficulty will lend a zest to the effort. As soon as you begin to feel that you are doing it, then try gently at first, but with increasing emphasis to revolve about your own axis. When you have got this working nicely, slowly and carefully at first, lift yourself to a new level of thinking. When you have got up there, hold it. As soon as in this way you have got yourself sufficiently elongated and extended, you will have gained the first step in the development of personality, namely harmony. In other words, you are completely and absolutely satisfied with yourself. If you were a nut before, you will never know it now. The next great thing to be acquired is optimism, cheerfulness, the absence of all worry. It is a scientific fact that worry has a physical effect upon the body, clogging up the esophagus and filling the primary ducts with mud. Cheerfulness, on the other hand, loosens up the whole anatomy by allowing a freer play to the bones. Begin each day with a smile. When you rise in the morning, throw open your window wide and smile out of it. Don't mind whom you hit with it. When you descend to the breakfast table, try to smile at your food, or even break into a pleasant laugh at the side of it. When you start off to your place of business, enter your streetcar in a bright and pleasant way, paying your fare to the conductor with a winsome willingness. When you get into your office, remove your coat and rubbers with the pretty little touch of Bonomi. Ask the janitor or the night watchman how he has slept. Greet your stenographer with a smile. Open your correspondence with another smile, and when you answer it, try to put into what you write just the little touch of friendly cheerfulness that will win your correspondence heart. It is amazing how a little touch of personal affection will brighten up the dull routine of business correspondence like a grain of gold in the sand. Don't sign yourself yours truly, but in some such way as yours for optimism or yours for 100% cheerfulness. But I will show you what I mean in a more extended way by relating to you the amazing but well authenticated story of the rise and success of Edward Beenhead. The remarkable case of Edward Beenhead, an amazing story of success. In presenting in support of what has been written in the preceding paragraphs, the instance of Edward Beenhead, I may say that I have no doubt whatever of the authenticity of the story. It is too well attested to admit of doubt. I have seen this story of the rise of Edward Beenhead under his own and other names printed in so many journals that it must be true. The more so as the photograph of Beenhead is reproduced beside the story. And in many cases the editor gives a personal guarantee that the story is true. In other cases, readers who doubt or invited to cut out a coupon, which will bring them a free booklet that will give them a course on leadership. Another proof of the truth of the story is that Edward Beenhead's salary is often inserted and printed right across the page. I forget what it is. In fact, it is not always the same, but it fills all the available space. In many cases, Beenhead in his photograph is depicted as actually pointing at his salary with one finger and saying, do you want to earn this? Skeptical readers may suggest that Edward must have owed his start in life to early advantages of birth and wealth. He may have been a prince. This is not so. Beenhead had no birth and no wealth. Accounts differ as to where he was born. Some of the documents, as reproduced in the best advertising pages, represent him as a bright little farm boy from Guilcac, Iowa. It is well known, of course, that most railroad presidents and heads of colleges come from there. Pictures are numerous, which show Beenhead barefooted and with a five-cent straw hat standing in what looks like a trout stream. There is a legend from farmyard to manager's desk. Another school of writers, however, shows Edward as beginning his career in a great city, running errands at an admirable speed and labeled earning his first dime. All this, however, is a matter of controversy. The only thing of which we can be certain is that Edward Beenhead as a youth, just verging into manhood, was occupying a simple station as some sort of business clerk. Here came the turning point of his life. By a happy accident, Edward came across a little booklet entitled, Toot and Common is a Dead One, What Are You? Learn Personal Efficiency and Six Lessons, Right to the Nut University Post Office, Box 6, Canal Street, Buffalo. From this time on, Beenhead's fair minutes were spent in study. We have in proof of this the familiar illustration in which Edward is seen on a high stool in his office at lunch hour, eating a bun with one hand and studying a book on personality and the other. While at the side, inserted with a sort of little cloud, one can see Edward's two office companions playing crafts with two young Negroes. The picture is now rather rare, the little vignette of the crap game having proved rather too attractive for certain minds. In fact, some people quite mistook the legend, Do You Want to Make Money Fast? Beenhead took the entire course, occupying five weeks, and covering personality, magnetism, efficiency, dynamic potency, the science of power, and essentials of leadership. By the end of his course, Edward had reached certain major conclusions. He now saw that personality is power, that optimism opens opportunity, and that magnetism makes money. He also realized that harmony makes for happiness, and that worry would merely carry his waste products into his ducts and unfit him for success. Armed with these propositions, Edward Beenhead entered his office after his five-week course, a new man. Instead of greeting his employer with a cold, good morning, as many employees are apt to do, Edward asked his superior how he had slept. Now notice how the little things count. It so happened that his employer hadn't slept decently for ten years, and yet no employee ever asked him about it. Naturally, he reacted at once. Edward reacted back, and in a few minutes they were in close confabulation. Beenhead suggested to his employer that perhaps his ducts were clogged with albuminous litter. The senior man gravely answered that in that case he had better raise Edward's salary. Beenhead acquiesced with the sole proviso that in that case he should be allowed to organize his employer's business so as to put it on a strategic footing. Now observe again how things count. It so happened that this man, although carrying on a business which extended over six states and out into the ocean, had never thought of organizing it, and didn't even know what a strategic footing was. The result was a second increase of salary within 24 hours. In the weeks that followed, Edward Beenhead now seated in a Commodius office with a flat top desk and a view of the ocean and a range of mountains entirely reorganized the firm's business. His method was simple. The employees were submitted to a ruthless brain test which eliminated most of them. The business itself was then plotted out on a chart so designed as to show at a glance all the places where the firm had no business. Banks in which the firm had no money were marked with a cross. By these and other devices Edward rapidly placed the business on a new footing, stopping all the leaks, focusing it to a point, driving it deep into the ground, giving it room to expand, and steering it through the rocks. The situation is perhaps more easily understood by stating that henceforth the model of the business became service. The natural upshot of it was that before long Edward Beenhead's employer summoned him up to his office and informed him that he was getting old. He was seven weeks older than when we began with him and that he was now prepared to retire to a monastery or to a golf club and that if Edward wanted the business he could have it. Hence at the end we see Edward Beenhead sitting behind his desk half revolved in a revolving chair and with a beautiful stenographer with an easy touch. There are two little placards nailed up one on each side of his head bearing the legend's efficiency and service. And one wonders where are those fellows who were playing crafts with the Negroes? The success of great men. It is very difficult to leave this topic of success without saying something about the success of great men. Indeed there is no reason why I should. I wonder if it has ever occurred to the reader to ask why there are so few great men and why so few men succeed in lifting themselves above the average level. Perhaps it hasn't, but if he did ask why we cannot all raise ourselves above the average the answer would be very simply that we all can if we try. This is a thing that we realize at once when we study the careers of great men. But to study them properly we must not turn to the dull pages of the college histories. There only a very limited and partial account of the great is found. To get the real facts we must open the advertising pages of the illustrated magazines and we can see at a glance that they tell us vital things never touched upon by the standard histories. For example it is very doubtful whether Bancroft ever knew that George Washington was in the habit of taking four deep breaths just before eating. If he did he never mentions it nor does he make any reference to the fact that Benjamin Franklin once said that no perfect breakfast food had as yet been found that of course was in his day it has been found since as we shall see. In the same way Lord Macaulay a man otherwise well informed does not seem to know that Oliver Cromwell once said the secret of making money lies in scientific investment nor was Shakespeare aware that the cloak or mantle which Julius Caesar wore on the day he overcame the nervy E and which he wore when he was stabbed by his assassins was undoubtedly made by the famous knit knot process now so widely known. One asks in vain what kind of suspenders did Henry of Navarre use? What was it that Charlemagne used to say about carrying a camera with you during a vacation in the Adirondacks? What sort of exercise did Queen Elizabeth take for 10 minutes every morning? And what attitude was Lord Bacon standing when he said Mr. Businessman why not use a fountain pen? But in recent times all these fascinating things are being solved for us by the painstaking researchers of the advertising experts we are getting to know things about our great men that we never knew before intimate personal things that we never knew before and of all the historical characters whose careers are being thus illuminated there is one who stands out conspicuously above all others the emperor Napoleon this great man enjoys in the success movement and eminence over all others it is the aim of everybody to be a Napoleon in his own particular line of activity and a great many are succeeding you can see their pictures any day there are at least 37 Napoleon's now doing business there is a Napoleon of billiards and a Napoleon of water polo and a Napoleon of the rubber shoe industry and there's also a man who is the Napoleon of pants designers and another who is the Napoleon of the ladies shirt waist business there is a dog who is the Napoleon of aridale terriers and there is a cow who is the Napoleon of Holstein milk givers in short it is becoming a very important thing to learn how to be a Napoleon you have only to turn over the back pages of any of our greatest journals the serious pages where they teach people how to live and how to sell things to see little pictures of Napoleon inserted everywhere sometimes there is just his head under his hat sometimes a full length picture to show his hands clasp behind his back and in each case there is some little motto that Napoleon said or some statement about his habits from across the years and over the wastes of the South Atlantic Napoleon is still teaching us how to live and how to sell things from these statements thus printed I have pieced together a composite picture of Napoleon in which is shown those little personal things that made him what he was anyone who wants to be a Napoleon has only to imitate these things I admit that they are a little complicated but even Napoleon couldn't have learned them all at once he must have picked them bit by bit in the first place the great emperor was an early riser the hour of three in the morning saw him in the saddle or at his desk early rising he once said when taking a well-known breakfast food not only peptinizes the stomach but with the aid of a simple remedy obtainable at old drug stores restores tone and vigor to the lost digestion Napoleon also sat up late he never saw his couch till three in the morning the later the hour he once said in referring to a new patent oil lamp the better the brain it was the practice of Napoleon to chew his food 20 minutes before swallowing it eating a sirloin steak took him all day Napoleon was in the habit of eating standing up he also ate lying down he could even sit and eat while talking the great emperor habitually held his mouth firmly shut Napoleon always wore wool next to his skin he once said in an interview which he seems to have given to a well-known firm of woolen manufacturers in Patterson New Jersey there is nothing like wool in the same way he always said there is nothing like a delicious cup of ozo when exhausted from the pulpit and the platform Napoleon was passionately fond of walking also he never walked Napoleon drank but always with the strictest ability Napoleon that made little use of tobacco except in the form of snuff or cigars or cut plug during his exile at St. Helena Napoleon is reported to have said if I had taken a course in personal leadership I should not have landed here end of chapter one chapter two of the garden of folly by Stephen Leacock this liber box recording is in the public domain chapter two the human mind up to date note the discussion which follows below is intended to be merely a portion or half portion of a manual of the new mentality the work when finished will comprise 20 installments which may be read either singly or all at the same time the final addition will be bound and half calf for ordinary readers with a university addition for scholars complete calf and for the rich and addition deluxe sold at an addition deluxe the object of the entire work I need hardly say will not be to make money but to perform a service to the community to make this certain the word service will be stamped in gilt letters on each volume of a special or service addition of the book sold to servants the mind wave one of the most cheering things about this good gay world in which we are at present living is the recent pleasing progress of the human mind forever so many centuries the human mind had lain more or less dormant it was known that it was there but just where it was and what it did and how it did it was a matter on which nothing if anything was known within recent years all this has changed a great wave of mind culture has swept over the community people who never had any before now have little else it is generally admitted that the human mind was first discovered about four years ago by a brilliant writer in one of the sunday journals his article have we a subconscious ego was immediately followed by a striking discussion under the title are we topside up this brought forth a whole series of popular articles and books under such titles as willing and being how to think existence as a mode of thought the super self and such special technical studies as the mentality of the hen and the thought process of the potato this movement once started has spread in every direction all our best magazines are now full of mind in every direction one sees reference to psychoanalysis auto suggestion hypnosis hypnosis psychiatry in a variety and things never thought of a little while ago willpower is being openly sold by correspondence at about 50 cents a kilowatt college professors of psychology are wearing overcoats lined with fur and writing in little coupé cars like doctors the poor are studying the psychology of wealth and the rich are studying the psychology of poverty memory has been reduced to a system a good memory is now sold for 50 cents everybody's mind is now analyzed people who used to be content with the umblest of plain thinking or with none at all now resolve themselves into reflexes and complexes and impulses some of our brightest people are kleptomaniacs paranoics agoraphobists and dolomites a lot of our best friends turn out to be subnormal and not worth knowing some of the biggest businessmen have failed in the intelligence test and have been ruined a lot of our criminals turn out not to be criminals at all but merely to have a reaction for another person's money still more gratifying is the fact that we are now able to locate with something like certainty where the mind is and it appears that it is a ways down in fact is sinking into a bottomless abyss what we took for the mind is only an insignificant part of it a poor glimmer of intelligence a rush light floating on the surface of an unknown depth underneath the mind lurks the subconscious and a way down under this again the subliminal and under that is the primitive complex and farther down 50 feet in the mud is the cosmic intelligence this late item cosmic intelligence is thought by some people to be found in buddhism and other people say that it is seen in Walt Whitman and in Dante at his best it may also be connected with music but what is now an assured fact is that while human beings have only just begun to learn about these things the animals have known about them and been using them for years it seems that the caterpillar doesn't think at all he gave it up long ago he merely reacts the common ant formica americana instead of working all the time as we thought it did does not work at all it merely has a community complex in the loaves of one of its feet what we took to be the play of the young lamb lamb bends picola is simply a chemical movement of its tail under the influence of one or more stimuli in short the whole mental world has been thrown into the greatest excitement everybody is reacting on everybody else mind waves and brain waves blow about like sand in the Sahara things good and bad come at us like an infection we live in deadly fear that we may catch a Bolshevism as we might a cold everything rushes at us in waves a new york chauffeur chokes his employer and it is called a crime wave the man has rushed off to a rest house to have his complex removed while the people leave the city in the flood then they hear that a repentant burglar has given a million dollars to trinity church and that a moral wave is flooding over the city and they come back in this disturbed state nobody's mind can act alone everybody has to be in it with a lot of others family love is replaced by big brother movements and little sister agitations and a grown-up man subscribes 25 cents and wears a pink ribbon to help him to be kind to his own mother the outbreak of psychology prominent among all these phenomena is the great movement which is putting psychology into the front rank of human activities in earlier days this science was kept strictly confined to the colleges it was taught by an ancient professor in a skull cap with a white beard which reached to the foot of his waistcoat it had no particular connection with anything at all and didn't know visible harm to those who studied it it explained the difference between a sensation and a perception and between an idea and a notion as a college subject it was principally taken as a qualification for the football team and thus ranked side by side with architecture religious knowledge and the pork juggies ballad some of the greatest players on the harvard and yale teams knew little else all this changed as a part of the new research it has found that psychology can be used not only for the purpose of football but for almost anything in life there is now not only psychology in the academic or college sense but also a psychology of business a psychology of education a psychology of salesmanship a psychology of religion a psychology of boxing a psychology of investment and a psychology of playing the banjo in short everybody has his there is the psychology of the criminal the psychology of the politician and a psychology of the infant for almost every juncture of life we now call in the services of an expert psychologist as naturally as we send for an emergency plumber in all our great cities there are already or soon will be signs that read psychologist open day and night the real meaning of this is found in the fact that we are now able to use psychology as a guide or test in a thousand and one practical matters in the old days there was no way of knowing what a man could do except by trying him out now we don't have to do this at all we merely measure the shape of his head and see whether by native intelligence he can immediately and offhand pronounce th backward or account the scales of a goldfish this method has been applied for many years in the appointment of generals in the chinese army but with us it is new the intelligence test in other words the intelligence test has come to us as one of the first fruits of the new psychology in practically every walk of life this bright little device is now being introduced as a means of finding out what people don't know and for what particular business they are specially unfitted many persons it now appears go through life without being able to distinguish colors or to arrange equilateral triangles into a tetrahedron or to say the alphabet backwards indeed some persons of this sort have in the past gone clear through and got away with it they could hardly do so now and yet incompetent persons of this kind used often to occupy positions of trust and even to handle money let us see then what the intelligence test means if we wish to realize how slip shot is the thinking of persons in apparently sound mental condition we have only to ask any man of our acquaintance how much is 13 times 147 the large probability is that he doesn't know or let us ask any casual acquaintance how many cubic centimeters there are in the woolworth building and his estimate will be found to be absurdly incorrect the man in other words lacks observation his mind has never been trained to form an accurate judgment compare with this the operation of the trained keener mind such as this being fashioned by the new psychology this man or shall we say this mind for he deserves to be called it walks down the street with his eye alert and his brain active he notes the cubic contents of the buildings that he sees he can tell you if you ask him or even if you don't the number of the taxi cabs which he has passed or overtaken in his walk he can tell you what proportion of red haired men have passed him in a given time how many steps he has taken in going a hundred yards and how many yards he has walked in a given number of steps in other words the man is a thinker for such a man the intelligence test has no tears i questioned a man of this sort the other day i said you have been in such and such an apartment building have you not he answered with characteristic activity of mine yes and did you on entering such and such a hall in the building observe such and such a gold fish in such and such a bowl judge my surprise when he told me that he had not only observed it but had counted its scales and given it a peanut my readers moreover will readily believe me when i say that the man in question is the head of one of the biggest corporations in the city no one else could have done it but for persons who lack the proper training and habits of observation the intelligence test acts as a ruthless exterminator of incompetence the point of it is i repeat that it is aimed not at eliciting the things which from the very routine of our life itself we are certain we know but at those things which we ought to know but don't here are a few little examples of what i mean taken from the actual test questions used by one of our leading practical psychologists intelligence test for bank managers one can you knit two name your favorite flower three which is at the larger end of a safety pin four how many wheels has a pullman car five if a spider wants to walk from the top corner of a room to the bottom corner farthest away will he follow the angular diameter of the floor or will his path be an obese tabloid it is the last question i may say which generally gets them already four of the principal bank managers in new york have lost their positions over it let us put beside this from the same source another interesting set of questions intelligence test for hospital nurses one what is the difference between a federal reserve note and a federal reserve bank note two suppose that a general buoyancy had led you to expand beyond what you considered prudent and you felt that you must deflate what would you take in first i may say that of 17 trained nurses only one was able to answer these questions especially number two without wandering from the essential meaning even the odd one hardly counted as she turned out to be engaged to a bank teller still more striking is the application of the intelligence test to the plain manual occupations the worker fulfills let us admit his routine duty but we have to ask is this all that we have a right to demand from him no if the man is to be really competent his mind ought to have a reach and an outlook which go beyond the mechanical operation of his job i give an example intelligence test for marine engineers one are you inclined to sympathize with chapparelli's estimate of daunte's divina comedia two louvici pulchi it has been said voices the last strains of the age of the troubadours do you get this three alfieri must always be regarded rather as the last of the sink was empty then as the first of the modern's how do you stand on that let us put beside this as an interesting parallel the following intelligence test for professors of comparative literature one how much pressure per square inch of surface do you think a safe load to carry two suppose that just as you were getting to work you got trouble somewhere in your flow of gas so that that set up a backfiring in your tubes would you attribute this to a defect in your feed three suppose that you were going along late at night at moderate speed and properly lighted up and you saw a red light directly in front of you would you stop or go right on from all of which it appears that by means of the intelligence test we have now an infallible means of knowing just what a man amounts to if we want to know whether or not an applicant is suited for a job we have only to send him to the laboratory of a practicing psychologist and we can find out in 15 minutes all about him how vastly superior this is to the old and cumbersome methods of inquiring into a young man's schooling and into his family and reading personal letters of recommendation can hardly be exaggerated let me quote as a typical example the case which I have just mentioned that of letters of recommendation compare the old style and the new old fashioned that letter of recommendation given to a young man seeking a position in the milling business to measure smith brown and company dear sirs I should like to recommend to you very cordially my young friend at mr. ohoghan I have known him since his boyhood and can assure you that he is an estin of all young man who has had a good schooling and is willing to work when I add that he was raised right here in jefferson county and that his mother was one of the McGarregals I feel sure that you will look after him we have had an open fall here but a good spell of cold has set in since new years very faithfully new fashion the letter of estimation as supplied by a psychological laboratory expert measures smith brown and company dear sirs this certifies that I have carefully examined mr. ohoghan into my laboratory for 15 minutes and submitted him to various measurements and tests with a view to estimating his fitness for the milling business he measures 198 centimeters from end to end of which his head represents 7.1 percent we regard this as too large a proportion of head for a miller his angle of vision is 47 which is more than he will need in your business we applied various stimuli to the lobes of his neck and got very little reaction from him we were get to say that he does not know what 17 times 19 is and we further found that after being in our laboratory for 15 minutes he had failed to notice the number of pains in the windows on the whole we think him better suited for social service or university work or for the church than for a position of responsibility very truly a ps we impose our statement of account for 17 tests at $5 per test the value of the system however does not stop even at this point it is proving itself an invaluable aid in weeding out incompetent men who have perhaps escaped detection for many years for example a firm in Kansas were anxious to judge of the selling power of their salesman an intelligence test applied to their staff showed that not a single one knew how to sell anything the firm had been misled for years by the mere fact that these men were successfully placing orders a furniture factory in Grand Rapids submitted 71 of their employees to the test to see what they knew about furniture it appeared that they knew nothing about it one of the Kalamazoo celery companies anxious to develop the psychology of growing celery instituted a searching test of their gardeners it appeared that only four of them had ever heard of psychology and only one of them could spell it yet here were men who had been professing to grow celery for 20 years instances such as these show how far from perfect is our industrial system nor will it ever be improved until sweeping intelligence tests and wholesale dismissals have put it on a new basis the psychology of the animal mind the sad truth is that as yet most of us do not know how to think we think we think but we don't nor can we begin thinking until we are prepared to begin all over again and build up our thought process from its basis up herein lies the peculiar importance of animal psychology in the new wave of mentality already the ground has been broken careful investigations of the thought complex of the inn the worm and the bee have revealed to the world something of the wonderful mentality that was formerly rudely classed as instinct we now know that the bee could not construct her honeycomb in the particular form which she uses had she not some knowledge however modest of the mathematical law of the maximum cubic content where she got it we do not as yet know but we hope to find out our psychological investigators are sitting among the bees following the hens and associating with the worms and adding daily to our store of knowledge my own researches in this direction are not a wide extent but i have endeavored to fit myself for discussing the subject by undertaking the study of one particular animal i make here no claim to originality of method and readily admit that my researches are based upon i may stay are imitated from the best models of work in this direction i selected as my subject the common hoopoo partly because no one had investigated the hoopoo before and partly because good fortune threw the opportunity in my way in other words the observations which i have carried on in regard to the mentality and habits of the hoopoo fall within that large portion of the new mentality which deals with the mind of animals i should be ungrateful if i did not express my obligation to the authors of the play of animals the behavior of the toad the love affair of the lobster and other well-known manuals of this class but so far as i am aware i am the first to subject the hoopoo to the same minute scrutiny which has been so successfully applied to the bee the garden worm and the iguana done my acquaintance with the hoopoo herself i owe to the fortunate fact that beside my house is an empty brickyard devoid of grass occupied only with sand litter and broken stone in short a tempting spot for the entomologists it was while sitting on a brick in the empty brickyard occupied i fear with nothing better than counting the grains of sand in a wagon load that had been dumped upon the ground that i first saw the hoopoo she was making her way in the leisurely fashion that is characteristic of her from one tiny pebble to another daintily crossing the minute rivulets and ravines of the broken soil with that charm which is all hers the glorious occasion that was not to be lost as hastily as i could i made my way back to the house to bring my notebook my pencil without which my notebook would be but an aggravation and my lens alas by the time i had returned the hoopoo had disappeared i resolved henceforth to be of a greater prudence blaming myself for my lack of preparedness i took care next night to sleep with my lens in bed with me so as to be ready at the earliest dawn to proceed to the brickyard the first beams of day saw me seated upon the same brick my lens already at hand my notebook on my knee and my pencil poised in the air but alas my hopes were destined to be dashed to the ground the hoopoo did not appear the entomologist however must be patient for five successive mornings i found myself seated on the brick in eager expectation no result but on the sixth morning they're flashed through my mind one of those gleams of inductive reasoning which make the entomologist what he is it occurred to me with such force as to make me wonder why it had not occurred to me with such force before that on the first occasion i had seen the hoopoo at ten o'clock in the morning on all the other occasions i had sat on the brick at four in the morning the inference was obvious the hoopoo does not get up until ten to wait till ten o'clock was the work of a moment with renewed expectation i found myself seated on the brick at the very moment when the shadow thrown by the morning sun from behind the chimney of a nearby factory indicated to me that it was ten o'clock with a beating heart i watched the shadow steal across the ground alas i was doomed again to failure ten o'clock came and passed and no sign of the hoopoo greeted my anxious eye i was just about to leave the place in despair and to select for my research is some animal less erratic than the hoopoo such as the horse the boa constrictor or the common kangaroo when a thought flashed through my mind calculated to turn my despair into a renewed anticipation six days so it now suddenly occurred to me had elapsed one more would make seven seven days in a week the inexorable logic was complete the hoopoo must appear once a week the day of her first appearance had been sunday tomorrow she would come again the reader may imagine in what an agony of expectation i waited till next day spasms went through me when i thought of what the moral might or might not bring but this time i was not doomed to disappointment seated on my brick at the precise hour of ten and watching the moving shadow i became suddenly aware that the hoopoo had appeared and was moving daintily over the dusty ground there was no doubt of her identity my eye dwelt with delight on the beautiful luster of her carapace and the curvical appearance of her snortex her antennae gracefully swept the air before her while the fibulae with which her feet were shielded traced a feathery pattern in the dust hastily taking out my stopwatch i timed her she was moving at the rate of the tenth part of a centimeter in the twentieth of a second her general direction was north northwest but here entered an astounding particularity which i am as yet unable to explain the direction in which the hoopoo was moving was exactly reversed from that of the previous week i determined how to test the intelligence of the hoopoo taking a small piece of stick i placed it directly across her path she stepped over it i've now supported the same piece of stick by elevating it still lying in the hoopoo's path on two small pebbles she went under it i next placed both stick and stones together so as to form what must have appeared a formidable barrier directly in her path she went around it i now varied my experiment with the blade of my knife i dug directly in the path of the moving animal hole which must have appeared to her a considerable cavity she jumped across it i need not however recite in detail the series of experiments which i carried out on this and the following sunday mornings i tested the hoopoo in accordance with all the latest intelligence tests of animal life and in every test she acquitted herself not only with credit but with distinction i lifted her up with blades of grass carried her to a distance of 50 yards and set her down again to see if she could walk home which she did and fed her with minute particles of ferraginous oat cake soaked in champagne the result of my experiments showed her to be right up in the front class of animal psychology along with the ant the bee and the filipino in short if i wish to summarize the results of my scientific labors on the hoopoo and to set them down as an addition to human knowledge on a par with most of our new discoveries in regard to the behavior and psychology of animals i should formulate them as follows one when the hoopoo is unable to step over anything she walks around it two the hoopoo will drink water when she has to but only when she has to but she will drink champagne whether she has to or not three the religious belief of the hoopoo is dim had the hoopoo lived a great career would have opened up in front of her alas she did not an attempt to see whether the hoopoo could eat gravel prove disastrous but she at least lived long enough to add one more brilliant page to the growing literature of insect life i cannot but feel a sense of personal loss as i sit now in the solitude of the sunlit brickyard listening to the hum of the zoca tickle and the drone of the probiscus and the sharp staccato note of the jim jam the human memory try my system and you will never forget it but i turn not without a feeling of reluctance from the memory of the hoopoo and the subject of animal psychology to another aspect of the human mind now very much in the foreground of interest i refer to memory i gather from the back pages of the magazines which are the only ones that i ever read that there seems to be a great demand for the strengthening of the human memory a great many systems of memory are now being placed upon the market and these systems i am delighted to find involve no strain upon the brain can be acquired at an expenditure of only four minutes time each day resemble play rather than work and are forwarded to any part of the united states or canada for 50 cents persons who are not satisfied with the treatment may write and say so if they don't forget to do so in short anyone who cares to have it can now acquire a memory as prehensile as a monkey's tail this is indeed a boom after all what is so distressing as a failing memory any reader of this book can tell for himself whether he is in the first stages of the collapse of memory by asking himself whether he has any difficulty in recalling the names of the people he meets on the street does the reader find himself greeted two or three times a week and compelled to say excuse me i seem to know your face and there's something familiar about the droop of your head and the silly expression of your features and that asinine way in which you lean forward on your feet but i can't recall your name that however is only the first stage a little later on unless the memory is attended to and atoned up by a system it goes into a further lapse in which the victim of thus accosted on the street is only able to answer excuse me i can't recall your name i don't remember your face and never saw your clothes i don't recollect your voice if i ever saw you i have forgotten that if i ever knew you it has left no impression tell me frankly are you one of my relations are just one of my best friends after which it is very humiliating to have the stranger remind him of the simple fact that he was at these connectivity high school with him only 35 years ago but the loss of memory as to names and places is only a part of the evil many people find that as they grow older they lose their memory for words for passages from books for pieces of poetry familiar since childhood the reader may test his own power of memory by completing if he can the following the boy stood on the burning deck whence blank let us ask whence what and in what direction why was the deck burning and why had the boy selected it for standing on or this again under the spreading chestnut tree the village smithy stands the smith blank now then quite frankly what about the smith can you give any idea of his personal appearance what about his hands now what i may say at once that any reader who finds himself unable to recall poems of this class or to name the branches of the amazon or to remember who it was that borrowed a dollar from him at bridge is in a bad way and had better take treatment at once it is to meet this very kind of difficulty that i have been working out a system of memory as yet it is only in a fragmentary shape but even as it is it may be found of use for certain purposes i will take a very familiar and very important case the question of how to remember the delegates at a convention all of us nowadays have to attend conventions of one kind or another conventions of furniture men or rubber men or stone men or cement men gas men airmen any kind of men and at every convention the delegate from grand rapids michigan looks exactly like the delegate from miami florida and from it's quack and gava is there one asks any way by which one can remember the name of a peculiar delegate yes i think it can be done in my system in such a problem as this we proceed on the method of infinite verification put in simple language this means that if you say a thing over often enough presently you may remember it thus if a delegate is introduced to you under the name of mr lewis barker of owens sound ontario as soon as he has been presented you must say pardon me i am not sure if i have the name right lewis barker ah thank you mr barker and from where did you say from owens sound oh yes and i don't know if i got your christian name lewis oh certainly and what did you say was your surname barker yes exactly and from what town do you come mr barker from owens sound ah to be sure and you said it was in alberta no in ontario in ontario of course how stupid of me and pardon me i want to get it right did you say that your name was loyter tomlinson for the moment i can't remember which when you hear two or more people going through this kind of conversation you may be sure that they are memory experts and that they are paying 50 cents a week for memory lessons or they ought to at any rate there is no doubt that if that kind of question and answer is repeated often enough you will presently retain with absolute distinctness the recollection that the man's name is lewis barker either that or william baker and just at the time when you've got this established he himself will turn to you and say excuse me i am afraid i'm rather stupid but did you say that your name was edward peterson or lionel jennings it has to be observed however that even when this much has been accomplished you still may not be able to remember the delegates face that is another question science has not yet gone far enough to tell us whether it is possible to remember delegates faces at conventions such cases however are relatively simple i turn to the more difficult problem of how to remember telephone numbers everybody knows how provoking it is when we cannot remember whether our best friend's telephone number is four eight two one or four two eight one or just possibly eight two four one or even eight four two one with a faint suspicion that it may be two eight four one or a stop a bit two four eight one it seems a shame to remember it so nearly as that in fact within a few thousands and yet not get it the best solution no doubt is to associate only with people who have reasonable telephone numbers such as nine nine nine nine or zero zero zero zero failing that one must fall back on some kind of mnemonic device now in the case of numbers a great deal can be done by what we call technically the principle of association this means that after all everything must in a way be like something else and that even the oddest collection of figures are connected by some link or association with others more simple for example a friend of mine told me that he had great difficulty in remembering his telephone number which was two nine three seven j i drew his attention to the simple fact that two nine is only one short of 30 and that 37 is only three short of 40 and that j is the next letter before k after that the thing was absurdly easy a similar difficulty presented itself in another case where the telephone number was four seven five four but after turning it over in my mind i realized that four seven is the highest prime number above four one and that five four would be the next if it were five three instead of five four add to this that the number four seven five four itself is nothing other than the square root of 22 million six hundred thousand five hundred and sixteen and the problem is solved it may be objected that this form of memory work is open only to people of a mathematic mind such as actuaries astronomers and the employees of a cash register company other people may prefer a form of association dealing rather with facts than with figures in this connection i may quote the case of a man whose telephone number was 1066 and who was able to remember it by noticing that it represents the date of the norman conquest this is capable of a wide application if your telephone number is 2986 connected at once with the fall of the Ming dynasty in china if it is 3843 that is obviously the date of the death of aminope dead the first and so on in short whatever your number is you have but to look it up in a book of history connect an event with it learn the event memorize the day and the thing is done in such a case be careful not to say to the operator give me the landing of the pilgrim fathers uptown w here is a more intricate problem in which the student of memory may surprise his friends with the brilliance of his performance i refer to the power to memorize a long and disconnected series of names the best illustration or at least the most familiar is the series of the names of the presidents of the united states in order of office when we apply the principle of association to this what appears an almost instupable task is easily overcome take the first link in the chain we want to remember that after washington comes adams can it be done yes by association we connect with the word washington anything that it suggests and then something that that suggests and so on till we happen to get to adams washington evidently suggests washing washing evidently suggests laundry laundry evidently suggests the chinese the chinese evidently suggests missionaries missionaries evidently suggest the bible the bible begins with adam how ridiculously simple in conclusion i may say that if any reader of this book will send me 50 cents i will either a forward to him by post my entire system of memory or a b send him back his 50 cents or c keep his 50 cents and say nothing about it if his memory is so weak as to need a system he will have forgotten his 50 cents anyway end of chapter two chapter three of the garden of folly by steven leacock this liverbox recording is in the public domain chapter three the human body its care and prevention having put the human mind where it belongs or at least placed it where it can do no harm we shall proceed in the present chapter to deal with the human body in her various aspects most readers will admit except those who are complete nuts that with the single exception of the mind and the soul there is nothing so important as the body if we have no body it is doubtful if we could get along without the body most of us if not all of us would feel lost life itself would lose much of its elasticity and even the most optimistic would be oppressed with a sense of emptiness under such circumstances it is obvious that the care and use of the body is a matter of prime importance we must study the question of how we are to treat it what will be the best food to give it what would it like to eat does it care for fruit and nuts our eggs good for it in short the thoughtful man when he sits down to eat will not merely consider his own personal likes and dislikes but will remember that he must look after his body the same is true of exercise the wise man when he goes out for a walk will take his body along with him air is good for it and he will see to it that his body is always properly warned housed and cleaned it is not too much to say that the proper care of the body has a close connection with the health to maintain this care there is needed a continued and anxious personal attention the thing must not be left to subordinates the man of sense will keep up a minute and unceasing examination of his skin his hair and his whole exterior if he drops a hair he should pick it up at once one of the follicles at its base may have given way or perhaps the fall of the hair may mean that he is in the incipient stage of scatollosis or mange if so he ought to inform himself of it without delay nor is it only the external aspect of the body that should be an object of continuous attention the same thing is true of the interior or what we may call medically the inside the prudent man especially as he reaches middle life will keep a watchful eye turned on his inside or his ducts functioning how is his great colon and the shorter or semicolon what about that is there an easy flow of nitric acid from the esophagus to the proscenium if not what is stopping it has perhaps a lot of sand or mud made its way into the auditorium are the sebaceous glands in what one might call efficient working condition and are the vows of the liver revolving as they ought to are the eyes opening and shutting properly and is the lower jaw swinging on its hinges as it should in short the man of discretion will go over himself each day and tap himself with a small hammer to see that his body is functioning as it ought to this care of the body and particularly this attention to food is a thing of very recent growth it belongs only with the era in which we live and with the development of the advertising sections of the metropolitan press and with the invention of scenic advertising along the lines of our great railways it is amazing how careless our ancestors were in disrespect the early pioneers who cut down the forest and settled the farmlands of north america never seemed to have taken any exercise they knew nothing of the value of deep breathing or of the advantage of lifting the left knee up to the chest five times every morning before breakfast as to food the mental state of our ancestors was appalling they were ignorant of vitamins calories and of the proper proportion of phyrogenous and diaphanous elements in diurnal diet they ate pancakes oat cakes johnny cakes and other albuminous integers without realizing that in so doing they were increasing their consumption of protein without any corresponding balance of nitrogen they seem to have eaten meats pies ham sandwiches donuts and dog biscuits under the silly impression that such things are food we have only to open a modern scientific book on diet and what it does to us to realize that they are not these things may satisfy the appetite and distend the stomach and create a distressing hallucination of happiness but they are not food in the true sense food will be found to consist of certain chemical products including nitrogen carbon such as common coal cement glue and other life-giving elements to all of these we now give the name of the deminis to indicate that without them life is not possible or if possible at all is too dull to count but to get it the root of the matter we must turn back to the beginning of our analysis and must proceed to build up a science of food the science of food the first thing we have to do is to obtain a scientific view of the nature of food and to answer the question why do we eat and what will happen if we don't most people have never stopped to ask themselves why they eat and could not give a satisfactory reason why they do so from the medical point of view the problem is not so simple as it sounds but we may in an approximate way answer the question by saying that if we did not eat we should lose tone and elasticity there would be a lowering of the buoyancy our blood would slacken our stomach would sink and our clothes would come unbutton granted then that we are satisfied with the answer to our first question and admit perhaps regretfully that we must eat we are confronted with the second inquiry how much should we eat and when have we eaten enough here again science is able to give us a definite answer there are certain plain and obvious symptoms which indicate to the drained eye that we have eaten enough the distention of the stomach as notified by the stretching and cracking of the skin the bulging of the eyes and the inability to move the jaws should warn us that it is time to rise from the table if we can some specialists however hold that even when this stage has been reached a more complete repletion can still be secured by the infiltration of buckwheat pancakes and maple syrup this however is a technical matter of secondary importance the main factor is that after a certain point is reached a general feeling of compactness of solidification of unification of the whole body sets in and informs us that if we like we can stop eating without harm this much established we pass to the much more delicate inquiry of what can we eat and if we do how can we digest it this inquiry we cannot undertake however until we are prepared to understand what it is that happens medically and scientifically to our food the process runs thus the food is first introduced into the mouth where it is thrown violently back and forward beating with great force against the cheeks by this means it is folded into a ball and thrown to the esophagus which catches it spends it round and hurls it with a splash into the stomach in this organ it is further pounded bow for ice kicked and bruised reduced thus into its elements the food is divided some of it passes into the liver some into the heart some into the eyes causing them to bulge while some again goes back into the face causing it to swell and expand until its temperature reaches the boiling point and is carried off in the form of steam the food thus used is thrown by the stomach into the tetrahedron and disappears so far so good we have now to ask what particular substances are those which present to us the proper food values science tells us that food consists of the following things the class of substances called proteins such as ordinary paste glue as found on the back of postage stamps shoe blacking including tan polish etc etc the whole class known as carbons such as common coal burnt sticks lamp black and so on a number of gases to include nitrogen hydrogen sulfuric acid has found in eggs and so forth in addition to these principal articles of diet the body needs if it is to maintain a perfect health a certain quantity of phosphorus lime old iron sugar gin cement rust beans mud and other bone making elements computation by calories for a perfect science of food we need however more than a mere list of the food ingredients we must have some form of relative measurement of computation modern science applies this in the form of the calorie one of the newest and brightest discoveries in the art of eating a calorie which is derived from the greek calico i eat means the amount of units of heat which a food constituent imparts to the body thus when we eat a pound of beef steak we are aware of a growing sensation of heat on eating a second pound we are hotter still on eating the third pound our latent heat if it were not carried off in the form of a cloud rising from the face would result in serious inconvenience and perhaps an in a liquefaction of the kidneys in other words we should be at the boiling point experience shows that a pound of beef steak contains 800 calories a pound of sausages contains 1600 calories while cold tar although it is nearly 500 times sweeter than sugar contains no calories at all that is why we do not eat cold tar on the other hand various articles of diet which are very commonly neglected are very rich in calories of these we may mention brazil nuts popcorn timothy hay spinach raw oats and grass seed we are now in a position to indicate the general tenor of a balanced diet we may set it down somewhat as follows breakfast menu for an adult 100 calories of nitrogen dioxide 100 calories 10 pounds of popcorn 100 calories one packet of bird seed it will be found that any adult in good condition who eats this breakfast will rise from it with a sense of lightness and of all ability quite lacking after his usual diet breakfast menu for a child 100 calories of hay one pint of sour milk very rich and swarming with vitamins two pounds of beef steak high value and carbohydrates one cake of soap let us try a slight variation aviators breakfast before flying hydrogen 400 calories popcorn half a bushel aviators dinner after flying one pound of cement three calories of iron one can of stewed lead with perhaps a crab apple anybody with a constructive mind will readily see how easy and simple it becomes when once we have a proper knowledge of food values to put together a suitable diet or menu for any kind of occasion it is needless to multiply examples but a few typical illustrations may serve to develop our meaning to the saturation point thus menu for annual luncheon of an artist's league orders air soup nitrogen fish gasoline pièce de résistance of 100 calories spinach deserved more spinach having now arranged a perfect diet adaptable to all places and times our next concern is with the problem of how to digest it can we do it we can modern science is able to state confidently that food if properly combined and put into the body can be digested in fact this is one of the great triumphs of modern science in past ages though was not known at the time many of the principal troubles of the world arose from indigestion we read of the deep melancholy of daunte and of how he would sit brooding for hours this was indigestion if daunte had taken a few calories of liquid air and a plate of popcorn every morning he would never have felt this we read of the terrible restlessness all over europe which led to the first crusade again indigestion if peter the hermit and his followers had known how to make a few suitable exercises on the floor of the bathroom every morning they would never have started for jerusalem in other words the secret of digestion lies in exercise not taken in the rude fashion of earlier times on horseback and with hounds and in such ways but taken on the floor of the bathroom while lying on the stomach we now know everybody knows who reads in the press that exercise of this kind can be so contrived as to be a form of play of mere skittishness the person exercising jumps out of his bed of a morning rushes to the bathroom throws himself on the floor and in 10 minutes of playfulness sets himself up in energy for the day without wishing to injure the sale of any of the numerous methods of exercise already on the market i venture here to put in my own system merely as a sample more or less typical of what is being achieved in this respect daily exercise on the floor in taking these exercises the operator should be dressed in pajamas and the exercises should be performed on the floor of a bathroom this last is a point of special importance the floor of the bathroom according to all published directions is the only safe place in which to take these exercises they should not be taken on the floor of a ballroom or on the table of a dining room course number one this course is especially designed for persons in middle life anxious to get rid of obesity melancholy and tass eternity movement number one standing on the ball of the left foot wave the right foot three times smartly around the head at the same time shouting hurrah hurrah hurrah movement number two do it again movement number three again movement number four once more this time shouting ha ha ha as the foot whirls around the head movement number five standing in an easy attitude past the right arm below and behind the right knee so as to bring it round above and beyond the left shoulder at the same time rapidly revolving the body to the right and elevating the left foot so as to pivot on the right heel movement sticks keep on spinning movement number seven reverse movement number eight go into low gear movement number nine stop movement number ten turn a couple of hand springs downstairs and sit down to breakfast 10 minutes of this kind of play taken every day will keep obesity at arm's length indefinitely course number two for businessmen this course is so designed that it can be taken in the office itself at intervals between signing checks closing deals and taking in money there is no need in short for the businessman to get out of his swivel chair while doing these movements movement number one move the ears gently back and forward movement number two light a large cigar and breathe very deeply in such a way as alternately to draw the smoke into the cavity of the mouth and expel it movement number three while still continuing number two place the feet upon a stool or chair within easy distance fold the hands across the stomach and close the eyes movement number four keep on movement number five let the cigar fall sideways into an ashtray place the head in a drooping position draw a handkerchief over the cranium and remain in this posture for half an hour movement number six pretend to snore movement number seven come smartly to an attitude of alacrity remove the handkerchief pick the cigar up out of the ashtray whirl around three times on the swivel chair ring for the stenographer and start a new deal at the same time moving the ears back and forward with rapidity so much then for our ideas of what human food ought to be and what it ought to contain let us now ask because we must keep on asking something is it possible to obtain any simple prepared food which contains all the required ingredients in exactly the right proportion and has such a food ever been discovered we answered it is and it has this marvelous achievement of science was consummated in the discovery of humpo the perfect breakfast food obtainable at all grossers i do not know whether our readers have ever heard of humpo they may have lived so far out of the main current of modern thought that they know nothing of it but at least they have read in the advertising pages of the press of various preparations similar yet inferior by the way all readers should be cautioned never to accept these inferior preparations no matter what persuasion or blandishments may be used they should answer no i want umpo they must never accept the statement that any preparation is equal to it to any such insinuation they must say with the utmost firmness i insist on umpo students of this subject know how long and how eagerly the world had sought a perfect breakfast food benjamin franklin has said to have said that if there had been a perfect breakfast food there would have been no declaration of independence napoli and at st. halena often remarked that with a perfect breakfast food he would have won the battle of water blue and abraham lincoln in his droll way once said that if he had a perfect breakfast food he wouldn't take any breakfast but for years the greatest scientists worked in vain sir humphrey davie charles darwin and thomas huxley were compelled to abandon the problem it remained for dr oscar p clune spots to solve it the picture of dr clune spots may be seen in the advertising pages of any illustrated periodical he is depicted in what is evidently his laboratory shrouded by huge glass retorts crucibles test scales and little heaps of various grains the intensity of the expression of the doctor's face shows that at the moment when they photographed him he was in the very act of discovering humpo it was his task to prepare a food product containing exactly the right amount of starch mud and phosphorus to supply the great life-giving elements with just enough amygdaloid to make it palatable as soon as he had done this dr plume spots rightly called the wizard of food gave his preparation to the world it may be now had anywhere put up in a sealed package and sold for a nominal sum payable merely in money great moments in the history of human welfare the discovery of a balzo by the wizard of the aterondacks undoubtedly the discovery of humpo marked an era in human history in fact dr plume spots who is modesty itself is reported to have said his words are printed on the package a perfect breakfast means a perfect day the only other achievement in the history of human welfare that can be compared with the compounding of humpo is the story of the discovery of balzo what humpo does for the well body balzo does for the sick the problem in this case was to find not a substance which would maintain the body in health but a remedy which should heal and restore the body in any and every form of illness by this time no doubt all the world knows the story everybody who reads is familiar with the picture of the individual whom i designate the wizard of the aterondacks this venerable man looking like father time wearing a flowing beard and dressed in a bath towel is seen on the outside of the package of balzo and elsewhere while engaged in stirring the contents of a huge iron pot all around him is a setting of pine trees and rock in the fastnesses of the mountains the whole scene of breeze and aroma of the woods and of the life giving balsam which must exist there as the steam rises from the pot we realize that the wizard is in the act of discovering his great remedy the mind is almost staggered at the thought the remedy once found the next problem was to give it an appropriate name such a name ought to be at once scientific and scholarly and yet short enough to be cheap to print and calculated to convey a certain hint but not too much of its possible connection with the balsam tree with characteristic ingenuity the wizard himself after deep thought invented the name of balzo under which the great remedy has since become famous all the world over readers by the way are warned that anything that is called something else is a different thing and should be avoided like the past unscrupulous dealers and we know what they are may try to sell us preparations for porting to be equal in curative property but the reader has only to understand what balzo does to realize that there can be only one thing like it a word as to the properties of balzo let it first be distinctly understood that that balzo has no connection whatever with the remedies and the treatments of the medical colleges it stands on a much higher authority the original secret of balzo comes from the dog rib indians it was perhaps known also to the flatheads and the snub-nosed hyudes and other great aborigines possibly the hot and tots used it at any rate balzo is a simple and when we say that we reach our readers where they live the extraordinary advantage of balzo lies in the wide range of its use in the first place it undoubtedly heals all forms of bone disease when rubbed on the bones for all internal complaints especially those indicated by a sinking or depressed feeling or a forlorn sensation or by an inability to earn money balzo effects an immediate cure in these cases it is taken internally by the pint for diseases of the hair such as complete baldness or lethargy of the scalp a smart rubbing of balzo will work wonders while for infantile complaints such as screw poop peresis and so forth the child should be rubbed with balzo and laid upon a shelf it is curious to think that if the dog rib indians had all died and if there had been no conservation of the great forests but after all why think it the essential thing is that someday the jealousy and envy of the colleges will give way and this great remedy will come into its own the secret of longevity and perpetual youth our readers those of them who have arrived at this point of our discussion and we are really not concerned with the others will naturally interpose and say you have told us how the body may be sustained renovated and upholstered by means of systematic diet and exercise and how it can be restored from vital or wasting disease such as baldness mange and sinking of the stomach what we wish to know is how long can life be thus sustained and prolonged if they do ask this our readers will receive a shock of surprise in fact we have been keeping this shock for them when we say that there is no reason why they should not live as long as they care to this offer is restricted of course to readers of these pages others must die as usual in other words we must now know so much about longevity that we have practically arrived at the secret of living forever or at any rate until death it may be of interest to show the way in which modern science has arrived at this conclusion in the first place a great many actual cases of longevity have been examined and useful conclusions drawn from each i will quote a few cases here merely a few among thousands such as help toward deductions in regard to the possibilities of old age they are taken as appears from the form in which they are written from the columns of the daily papers but each case has also been certified to either by a local minister of the gospel or a notary public or by a duly qualified hotel keeper case number one as reported in the daily analyst cedar corners iowa william waterson celebrated his hundred and first birthday at his residence here at cedar corners the old gentleman is still hailing hearty and celebrated the day by splitting two cords of wood mr waterson has been a water drinker all of his life having never tasted alcoholic spirits or tobacco the inference here is obvious mr watersons life has been preserved for the plain and evident reason that he drinks only water and never smokes if he touches whiskey or cigarettes it will be all over with him we put beside this however a rather puzzling item which appears in the weekly news and intelligence sir georgina township ontario mr edward easiest celebrated his 101st birthday here at the home of his son surrounded by his grandchildren in the presence of a representative of the weekly intelligence sir devoutly giving thanks to the lord for his continued health and strength mr easiest has been a heavy smoker all his days and it still relishes his glass of hot toddy compounded of rum spices and sugar good old man can we blame him and in any case it is clear that he owes his life to rum and tobacco indeed what looks simple at first begins to appear more complicated compare this gerrits corner new york cornelia cleopatra washington colored celebrated here her 110th birthday yesterday she remembers george washington as a child plain enough she lived so long because she was colored there seems no other reason clan fed wales from the clan fed fittest mrs gluelan owen a resident of this town celebrated her 105th birthday yesterday mrs owen who has lived in wales since her childhood 110 years ago still retains all her faculties and maintains a keen interest in english politics especially in the doings of loy george whom she remembers 100 years ago as a pupil of her father's school mrs owen talks interestingly of the great fire of london which she remembers as a girl and of the sailing of the pilgrim fathers many of whom she knew she doubts whether the cabinet of the labor party in england contains men of the same caliber as the greatest men in history in this case without a doubt mrs owen owes her life to her interest in english politics indeed one observes in many cases of this sort from examples such as these we see it wants that there are certain things which can do stupe perpetual youth such as drinking nothing else throughout life but water or nothing but rum as the case may be total absence from tobacco undoubtedly prolongs life and so does excessive smoking but modern science has recently recognized that in the main what we call old age is a condition brought on by an insufficiency of sour milk in the system the discoveries of dr. minceclough have shown that sour milk is full of minute polyglots which when let loose in the human body effect a general restoration by removing all waste it is now proven beyond doubt that anybody who takes a gallon of sour milk night and morning can live forever the only question is is it worth it end of chapter three