Lately I have been giving a good deal of attention to hygiene--in other
people. The gentle reader will notice that, as a rule, the man who gives
the most time and thought to this subject is an invalid himself; just
as the young theological student devotes his first sermon to the care of
children, and the ward politician talks the smoothest on the subject of
how and when to plant rutabagas or wean a calf from the parent stem.
Having been thrown into the society of physicians a great deal the past
two years, mostly in the role of patient, I have given some study to the
human form; its structure and idiosyncrasies, as it were. Perhaps few
men in the same length of time have successfully acquired a larger or
more select repertoire of choice diseases than I have. I do not say this
boastfully. I simply desire to call the attention of our growing youth
to the glorious possibilities that await the ambitious and enterprising
in this line.
Starting out as a poor boy, with few advantages in the way of disease,
I have resolutely carved my way up to the dizzy heights of fame as a
chronic invalid and drug-soaked relic of other days. I inherited no
disease whatever. My ancestors were poor and healthy. They bequeathed me
no snug little nucleus of fashionable malaria such as other boys had. I
was obliged to acquire it myself. Yet I was not discouraged. The results
have shown that disease is not alone the heritage of the wealthy and the
great. The poorest of us may become eminent invalids if we will only
go at it in the right way. But I started out to say something on the
subject of health, for there are still many common people who would
rather be healthy and unknown than obtain distinction with some dazzling
new disease.
Noticing many years ago that imperfect mastication and dyspepsia walked
hand in hand, so to speak, Mr. Gladstone adopted in his family a regular
mastication scale; for instance, thirty-two bites for steak, twenty-two
for fish, and so forth. Now I take this idea and improve upon it. Two
statesmen can always act better in concert if they will do so.
With Mr. Gladstone's knowledge of the laws of health and my own musical
genius, I have hit on a way to make eating not only a duty, but a
pleasure. Eating is too frequently irksome. There is nothing about it to
make it attractive.
What we need is a union of mush and melody, if I may be allowed that
expression. Mr. Gladstone has given us the graduated scale, so that we
know just what metre a bill of fare goes in as quick as we look at it.
In this way the day is not far distant when music and mastication will
march down through the dim vista of years together.
The Baked Bean Chant, the Vermicelli Waltz, the Mush and Milk March, the
sad and touchful Pumpkin Pie Refrain, the gay and rollicking Oxtail Soup
Gallop, and the melting Ice Cream Serenade will yet be common musical
names.
Taking different classes of food, I have set them to music in such a
way that the meal, for instance, may open with a Soup Overture, to be
followed by a Roast Beef March in C, and so on, closing with a kind of
Mince Pie La Somnambula pianissimo in G. Space, of course, forbids an
extended description of this idea as I propose to carry it out, but the
conception is certainly grand. Let us picture the jaws of a whole family
moving in exact time to a Strauss waltz on the silent remains of the
late lamented hen, and we see at once how much real pleasure may be
added to the process of mastication.
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