By Aloysius Coll.
His eyes are balls of polished steel;
His lungs are sponges dried;
His blood is bouillon-concentrate
In veins of leather hide.
His muscles creak like pulley ropes
When hurried into play;
His hair is like piano chords—
Some chords are lost, they say.
His heart’s a little globe of punk—
A house of constant gloom,
For love can never burn within,
Because there isn’t room.
His appetite has dwindled down
To fit his little food.
Till fruit is “water in a poke”
And bread is “so much wood.”
Hot apple-tarts and pumpkin-pies—
He reads of them aghast:
And waffles brown and chicken-stew
Are “terrors of the past.”
And, smiling, from his vest he slips
A tiny box of tin,
With capsules brown and pellets pink
All rattling within.
Then, with a gulp, he swallows down
His dinner from the can—
This product of the health-food school,
The Concentrated Man!
_What to Eat._
✷ ✷ ✷ ✷
’TWAS EXCELSIOR.
The shades of night were falling fast
As down the café aisle there passed
A girl who bore what looked like rice,
Yet called she it by this device—
“Excelsior!”
“’Tis not ‘Sawdusto,’ she explained,
“Nor ‘Mat in Middlings,’ hulled and grained,
Nor yet ‘Near-Fodder,’ nor ‘Chew-Chew’—
This breakfast food is something NEW—
“Excelsior!”
_Boston Post._