DEAR SIR,--I read your article in the May _Cosmopolitan_ and was very
much impressed with the ideas you advocated. I had for twenty years
been troubled with constipation, which caused colds and grippe, besides
making me very sluggish. Being a singer and teacher, these things were
great handicaps on my work, so after reading your article I decided to
try it. I was in Paris studying singing with Oscar Seagle and Jean de
Reszke, and of course I needed to be at my very best all the time, but
I wasn't. I couldn't keep from taking cold, which always knocked me
out of a week or two of work. So when my teachers went away for their
vacation, I decided to start the fast, and on July 31 I did so. Being
a coffee "toper," it made it very hard for me to give up my breakfast
cup of strong black coffee, but I did it and the first three or four
days I nearly lost my mind. Never experienced anything in my life that
required so much will power. However, I stuck to it, but I was very
hungry and had a splitting headache for four days, after which it got
a little better. Then about the fifth day, as my hunger began to leave
me, I began to break out as if I had measles--this kept up for five
or six days. To add to that, my mouth and throat became inflamed and
very sore, and that didn't cure up until about the twelfth day of the
fast. I was exceedingly miserable all these days, but I realized how
much I needed something of the kind to get the terrible poison out of
my system, so I just held on and drank much water, and walked in the
sunshine all I could. My tongue had a thick coat on it and I had a
terrible bilious taste in my mouth for twelve days. I believed it would
take about twenty days to fix me up just right, so I was going ahead
when I suddenly decided to make a hurried business trip back to Texas;
so on the fourteenth day I sailed from Cherbourg without having broken
my fast.
I carried a dozen oranges on board with me to make sure. When I began
to breathe the salt air I got hungry, so on the fifteenth day I began
to eat oranges and kept it up for a day and a half and then tried to
get some milk, but could get none that was good, and most of what I got
was of the condensed variety. I did the best I could for four days,
when my system rebelled and became clogged up and I took another cold
as usual. So I decided not to eat another mouthful on that ship, and I
kept the fast up until I got to Ft. Worth. Then I went at the matter
according to your instructions, and the results were perfect. I took
up oranges for two days, then went on the milk diet for two days, then
began on the boiled wheat. The results have been highly satisfactory.
Going from a cold climate like Paris into a veritable inferno like
Texas in summer made it very hard on me, but the wheat diet did
everything for me and gave me unusual strength and vigor even in that
hot climate where vigor doesn't abound much in hot weather. All my
troubles seemed to disappear. I had not sung a tone since I began the
first fast in Paris, so I began to practice again, and I never realized
such a change in anything. Everything went so easy and all my friends
said that they never saw such improvement in a human voice. I have
never even desired to taste coffee. I am living on wheat, nuts, all
kinds of fruit and vegetables, and the result is everything you said it
would be. I have completed my business in Texas and will start back to
Paris to-day. I am preparing myself for the journey this time. I have
a large "thermos" bottle which I have filled with wheat and will carry
plenty of fruit and nuts.
I thank you very much for your information along the line of health.
You have been a great blessing to me, and I am sure you have been also
to thousands of others.