tent, in many instances, than I
have yet done. I repeat no idea for the _sake_ of repeating it. Not a
word is inserted but what seems to me necessary, in order that I may be
intelligible. Moreover, like the preacher of truth on many other
subjects, it is not so much my object to produce something new in every
paragraph, as to explain, illustrate, and enforce what is already known.

It may also be thought that I make too many books. But, as I do not
claim to be so much an originator of _new_ things as an instrument for
diffusing the _old_, it will not be expected that I should be twenty
years on a volume, like Bishop Butler. I had, however, been collecting
my stock of materials for this and other works--published or
unpublished--more than twenty-five years. Besides, it might be safely
and truly said that the study and reading and writing, in the
preparation of this volume, the "House I Live In," and the "Young
House-Keeper," have consumed at least three of the best years of my
life, at fourteen or fifteen hours a day. Several of my other works, as
the "Young Mother," the "Mother's Medical Guide," and the "Young Wife,"
have also been the fruit of years of toil and investigation and
observation, of which those who think only of the labor of merely
_writing them out_, know nothing. Even the "Mother in her Family"--at
least some parts of it--though in general a lighter work, has been the
result of much care and labor. The circumstance of publishing several
books at the same, or nearly the same time, has little or nothing to do
with their preparation.

When I commenced putting together the materials of this little treatise
on diet--thirteen years ago--it was my intention simply to show the
SAFETY of a vegetable and fruit diet, both for those who are afflicted
with many forms of chronic disease, and for the healthy. But I soon
became convinced that I ought to go farther, and show its SUPERIORITY
over every other. This I have attempted to do--with what success, the
reader must and will judge for himself.

I have said, it was not my original intention to prove a vegetable and
fruit diet to be any thing more than _safe_. But I wish not to be
understood as entertaining, even at that time, any doubts in regard to
the superiority of such a diet: the only questions with me were, Whether
the public mind was ready to hear and weigh the proofs, and whether this
volume was the place in which to present them. Both these questions,
howe