granite to porridge, and the wheat-husk is equally obstinate. So long as
enthusiasts ate husk and kernel ground together, little harm was done. But
when a more progressive soul declared that in bran alone the true
nutriment lay, and a host of would-be healthier people proceeded to eat
bran and preach bran, there came a time when eating and preaching both
stopped, from sheer want of strength to go on. The enthusiasts were
literally starving themselves to death--for starvation is by no means mere
deprivation of food: on the contrary, a man may eat heartily to the day of
his death, and feel no inconvenience, so far as any protest of the stomach
is concerned, yet the verdict of the wise physician would be, "Died of
starvation." If the food was unsuitable, and could not be assimilated,
this was inevitable. Blood, muscle, nerve--each must have its fitting
food; and thus it is easy to see why knowledge is the first condition of
healthful living. The moral is: Never rashly experiment in diet till sure
what you are about, and, if you can not for yourselves find out the nature
of your projected food, call upon some one who can.

Where wheat is ground whole, it includes six and a half parts of
heat-producers to one of flesh-formers. The amount of starch varies
greatly. Two processes of making flour are now in use,--one the old, or
St. Louis process; the other, the "new process," giving Haxall flour. In
the former, grindstones were used, which often reached so great a degree
of heat as to injure the flour; and repeated siftings gave the various
grades. In the new, the outer husk is rejected, and a system of knives is
used, which chop the grain to powder, and it is claimed do not heat it.
The product is more starchy, and for this reason less desirable. We eat
far too much heat-producing food, and any thing which gives us the gluten
of the grain is more wholesome, and thus "seconds" is really a more
nutritious flour than the finer grades. Try for yourselves a small
experiment, and you will learn the nature of flour better than in pages of
description.

Take a little flour; wet it with cold water enough to form a dough. Place
it on a sieve, and, while working it with one hand, pour a steady stream
of water over it with another. Shortly you will find a grayish, tough,
elastic lump before you, while in the pan below, when the water is
carefully poured off, will be pure wheat-starch, the water itself
containing all the sugar, dextrine o