rvous
appetite. Not only did she not need one third of the food she ate, but
indeed the other two thirds was doing her positive harm. The tax which
she put upon her stomach to digest so much food drained her nerves
every day, and of course robbed her brain, so that she ate and ate and
wept and wept with nervous depression. When it was suggested to her by
a friend who understood nerves that she would get better very much
faster if she would eat very much less she made a rule to take only one
helping of anything, no matter how much she might feel that she wanted
another. Very soon she began to gain enough to see for herself that she
had been keeping herself ill with overeating, and it was not many days
before she did not want a second helping.

Nervous appetites are not uncommon even among women who consider
themselves pretty well. Probably there are not five in a hundred among
all the well-fed men and women in this country who would not be more
healthy if they ate less.

Then there are food notions to be looked out for and out of which any
one can relax by giving a little intelligent attention to the task.

"I do not like eggs. I am tired of them." "Dear, dear me! I ate so much
ice cream that it made me ill, and it has made me ill to think of it
ever since."

Relax, drop the contraction, pretend you had never tasted ice cream
before, and try to eat a little--not for the sake of the ice cream, but
for the sake of getting that knot out of your stomach.

"But," you will say, "can every one eat everything?"

"Yes," the answer is, "everything that is really good, wholesome food
is all right for anybody to eat."

But you say: "Won't you allow for difference of tastes?"

And the answer to that is: "Of course we can like some foods more than
others, but there is a radical difference between unprejudiced
preferences and prejudiced dislikes."

Our stomachs are all right if we will but fulfill their most simple
conditions and then leave them alone. If we treat them right they will
tell us what is good for them and what is not good for them, and if we
will only pay attention, obey them as a matter of course without
comment and then forget them, there need be no more fuss about food and
very much less nervous irritability.

CHAPTER XVII

_Take Care of Your Stomach_

WE all know that we have a great deal to do. Some of us have to work
all day to earn our bread and butter and then work a good part of the
night t