After this volume was published in 1898, the field of experiment was
changed from the United States to Europe. The physical exercise and
mental recreation of the summer of 1899 consisted partly of bicycling.
We landed in Holland, toured Holland, Belgium, and Northern France, and
reached Paris in the course of about two months and with upwards of
five hundred miles' wheeling. For another month we bicycled leisurely
around Paris and added two or three hundred miles to our cyclometer
record. During the month of July the author further rode some seven
hundred miles in and about the Forest of Fontainebleau.
The idea of an endurance-test was suggested to the author by the ease
with which he accomplished a century of miles on the Fourth of July,
1899. Being in Paris, and wishing to celebrate a most beautiful summer
day and our National Holiday at the same time, an early start was made
and the beauty of the day, the charm of the golden harvest fields lying
between Paris and the Forest of Fontainebleau, and the noble forest
itself, led us on and on until the cyclometer showed a distance, for
the forenoon run, of slightly more than eighty kilometers (fifty miles)
in a straight-away line from hotel and home in Paris. Two years before,
fifty miles on bicycle, even when accustomed to riding daily during the
craze for bicycling, which was then at its zenith, if done in one day,
would have completely "done the author up" and would have called for
several days of rest for recuperation. In the present case, however, no
fatigue had yet been experienced and the day was still young.
The forest studio-home of friend Redfield, the Philadelphia
landscapist, was found on the edge of the forest bordering the Seine
at Brolles, and we went for a spin together and finally returned awheel
to Paris. To make a "century run" in a day had always seemed to the
author a feat for athletes and experts only, and when he found that
he had made it without any inconvenience and was in no way painfully
conscious of it next day, the ambition to see _what really could be
done_ was born. It would give practical measure of the improvement
due to an economical nutrition. It was known what the newly ambitious
contestant for a record _could not do_ two years before, but it was
now uncertain what he _might be able to do_ under changed condition of
health even with two years' additional handicap of age; besides, it
happened to be the half-century year of the author's life and a good
time to jot down a record of a new start in life.
Reference to "economical nutrition" in connection with a full measure
of recreation needs some explanation. To be economical means to most
persons privation of pleasure. It is true that the economic standard
attained by Luigi Cornaro had been maintained with ease by the author
since the beginning of his experiments in the summer of 1898. This
was not accomplished by trying to emulate Cornaro's example, but was
reached by a method of taking food, and developed in the course of a
special study of the economic natural requirements. The author ate
_just what his appetite called for_, as nearly as circumstances of
supply permitted, he ate _all that his appetite would allow_; enjoyed a
gustatory pleasure that _had never been equalled_ under old habits of
taking food, and was a distinct epicurean gainer by the economy learned
and practised. But--and in this "but" lies the secret--the solid food
had been munched appreciatively until it was liquefied and a strong
Swallowing Impulse compelled its deglutition. The sapid and nutritious
liquids were tasted as the wine tasters taste wine, as tea tasters
taste tea, and as all experts test, or "Get the Good" out of, anything.
Instead of being drunk down in a flood like water, which has no taste
and no reason to stay in the region of taste, delicious country milk
was sipped and tasted with the end of the tongue, where the best
taste-buds are, until it disappeared by natural absorption. In this way
the milk was fully enjoyed, largely assimilated, and, as the result
of almost subsisting on bread and milk alone, at times, in response
to the country appetite, the disproportionately excessive waste
usually encountered when pursuing a milk-diet was not experienced; the
digestion-ash (solid excreta) was extremely small and averaged only
about one-tenth of the amount commonly wasted in the digestive process
in ordinary habits of taking bread and milk hastily and carelessly.
It is significant that, while the quantity of food habitually taken
was about one-third of the text-book normal-average prescription, the
solid waste was _only a tenth_ of the usual amount, showing a much more
economical digestion and a better assimilation. This possibility of
a profitable and an agreeable economy was afterwards verified in the
Venice experiments.
An æsthetic result was attained in connection with these experiments
which cannot be too often advertised. All putrid bacterial
decomposition was avoided in the process of digestion, and all sense
of muscular fatigue was absent, even following strenuous and unusual
exercise.
Instead of involving deprivation and asceticism, that mid-summer month
in the Forest of Fontainebleau, occupied in making an _economy_ and
an _endurance_-test, was a carnival of tempting plenty in the way of
good food enjoyed to the full satisfaction of a healthy appetite. The
endurance-test recounted in the letter following is evidence of the
effect of such sumptuousness when approached by different methods of
gratification. The powerful young artist who volunteers the story lived
in the ordinary way and the aged reformer and research-dietetician,
whom the young athlete paced, treated his food as recommended in this
book.