The reader will observe that I discuss this fasting question from a
materialistic view-point. I am telling what it does to the body; but
besides this, of course, fasting is a religious exercise. I heard
the other day from a man who was taking a forty-day fast, as a means
of increasing his "spiritual power." I am not saying that for you
to smile at--he has excellent authority for the procedure. The point
with me is that I find life so full of interest just now that I don't
have much time to think about my "soul." I get so much pleasure out
of a handful of raisins, or a cold bath, or a game of tennis, that I
fear it is interfering with my spiritual development. I have, however,
a very dear friend who goes in for the things of the soul, and she
tells me that when you are fasting, the higher faculties are in a
sensitive condition, and that you can do many interesting things with
your subliminal self. For instance, she had always considered herself
a glutton; and so, during an eight-day fast, just before going to
sleep and just after awakening, she would lie in a sort of trance and
impress upon her mind the idea of restraint in eating. The result, she
declared, has been that she has never since then had an impulse to
over-eat.
There are many such curious things, about which you may read in the
books of the yogis and the theosophists--who were fasting in previous
incarnations when you and I were swinging about in the tree-tops by
our tails. But I ought to report upon one fasting experiment which
resulted disastrously for me. Earlier in this book I told how I had
been able to write the greater part of a play while fasting. Shortly
afterwards I plunged into the writing of a new novel, and as usual I
got so much interested in it that I wasn't hungry. I said that I would
fast, and save the eating time, and the digesting time as well. So I
would sit and work for sixteen hours or more a day, sometimes for six
hours at a stretch without moving. After two or three days of this I
would be hungry, and would eat something; but being too much excited
to digest it, I would say, "Hang eating, anyhow!"--and go on for
another period of work. I kept that up for some six weeks, and I turned
out an appalling lot of manuscript; but I found that I had taken off
twenty-five pounds of flesh, and had got to such a point that I could
not digest a little warm milk. I cite this in order that the reader may
understand just why I take a gross and material view of fasting. My
advice is to lie round in the sun and read story-books and take care of
your body, and leave the soul-exercises and the nervous efforts until
the fast is over. But all the same, I know that there will be great
poetry written some day, when our poets have got on to the fasting
trick--and when our poets care enough about their work to be willing to
feed it with their own flesh.
The great thing about the fast is that it sets you a new standard of
health. You have been accustomed to worrying along somehow; but now you
discover your own possibilities, and thereafter you are not content
until you have found some way to keep that virginal state of stomach
which one possesses for a month or two after a successful fast. It
must mean, of course, many changes in your life, if you really wish
to keep it. It means the giving up of tobacco and alcohol, and a too
sedentary life, and steam-heated rooms; above all else, it means giving
up self-indulgent eating.
A couple of years ago my wife and myself made the acquaintance of
a young lady patient in a sanatorium, who was in a much run-down
condition, anæmic and nervous. We persuaded her to take a fast of
five or six days, and afterwards take the milk diet, as the result of
which she went back to her home in Virginia with what she described
as "smiles and dimples and curves and bright eyes." She was so
enthusiastic about the cure that she proceeded to apply it to all her
family and her friends; and some time afterwards she wrote my wife
a most diverting account of her adventures. After some persuasion I
secured her permission to quote her letter, having duly omitted all the
names. It makes clear the thorny path which the fasting enthusiast has
to travel in this world.
I will try in a very limited space of time to tell you what
keeps me a slave here at home. I got Mr. X---- down from ----
to put papa and mamma on the fasting cure--papa had a bad case
of grippe--mamma had indigestion. My oldest married brother is
in dreadful health, and his wife and baby are not well. I wore
myself nearly out trying to get them well, and at the same time
trying to pick up some threads of long neglected social duties.
People were beginning to call me "stuck-up" (horrid vulgar term),
so unless I wanted to make enemies of the wives and daughters
of papa's and brother's business friends, I had to go to a few
parties and pay some long-neglected calls. I did it all, and then
decided to have Mr. X---- come to help me. I got papa and mamma
and M---- and _her baby_(!) on a fast--and then woe is me--I had
to get them off again! They had various and alarming symptoms due
to their ignorance of the methods, and the wild interest of the
town medicine-men. The family doctor gave me a "straight talk" and
asked me if I was going to try _to kill my father and mother_.
Papa would not give up his cigarettes, and a "toddy" now and then.
M----'s baby lost four pounds while his mother was fasting. All
the doctors' wives came to call, and beset me with questions--and
I had the d---- of a time. But I stood by my guns. When the
overfed, self-indulgent family all got to vomiting at once, my
hands were full, and I nearly had nervous prostration before I got
order out of the bedlam I had stirred up.
Well, they got over the fast and on to the milk. Then I had to
tend to the milk myself or they refused to drink it. Finally mamma
got to feeling so well that she sat up, and planned big course
dinners and invited people to eat them. She began to order new
clothes for the kids, new furnishings for the house, and started
in to live her disorderly, ungodly "Southern hospitality" life all
over again. Our senator died and mamma got into politics in the
new election; and Cousin J---- got drunk, and I had to go with him
to the Keeley Institute, etc., etc. Surely there is a heaven for
saints like me. I did not fly the roost as I was tempted to do,
but I answered midnight calls of the spoiled, nauseated ones, and
fixed hot-water bags, quelled riots among the meat-eating servants
and hungry children--and swore I'd win! I did. Well, I got things
going in fine order at last, with papa cured of his grippe and an
old case of kidney trouble. Mamma is now comfortably eating boiled
ham and stuffed peppers, and fruit cake and cherry pie, and green
olives and what not at the same meal. She is well, though. But
of course she will get sick again. Papa, the only sane member of
our family, is still holding on to the milk, taking four quarts
of buttermilk a day, and he is flourishing, thank heaven! M----
is still bilious, having broken her fast with hard-boiled eggs
and pork chops. And I am still living, in spite of having been to
Keeley, and incidentally having danced all night (with a low-neck,
short-sleeved gown on!) at the ---- Club ball, sat through several
dinners and bridge parties into the "wee sma' hours," and had
two men propose to me with the prelude, "You are the nicest,
most refined, and most lovable girl in the world if you _are_ a
crank." Wasn't that a nice beginning for a proposal of marriage?
I accepted them both on condition that I be allowed to remain a
crank.
Well, the next chapter began with an old lover who had married
another woman. He came to see me and said he had a tape-worm! Ye
gods--such romance! His wife had stomach and intestinal trouble.
I turned Mr. X---- over to them, and them over to Mr. X----. The
lady got along, but the poor man with a wild beast inside him
got so sick after an eight-day fast that he wanted to have me
mobbed, sent for two trained nurses and four doctors--this is no
exaggeration--the doctors looked at me, and looks were as plain as
words--"You little devil! You did it for pure meanness." For three
days my poor friend had the doctors giving him hypodermics, and
he never stopped vomiting until we were all nearly dead. Then he
quieted down, got well, ate a beef-steak with a few dozen oysters
and mushrooms, and took me riding in his new automobile. The grim
humor in the whole thing is that if I had not gotten my roses and
dimples and curves and bright eyes back by fasting, this man would
never have taken me riding in his new automobile. Take a tip from
me--all the good nursing and friendly efforts in behalf of the
health of my friends did not endear me to them one half as much
as the plump, rosy smile I wore with my new silk gown. The first
day our sick friend went out in his car--alas for the ways of
human nature--masculine human nature, I mean--I told him so. And
he agreed with me and ended by saying, "Darn an ugly woman--I'll
forgive a pretty one _anything_."