lly as
regards the last named. I sometimes wonder why, with a thousand islands to
choose from, the official salad mixer of the average hotel always picks
the wrong one.

I kept on. The thing proved magically easy of accomplishment. By the fit
of my clothing, if by nothing else, I could have told that several of my
more noticeable convexes were becoming plane surfaces and gave promise in
due season of becoming almost concave, some of 'em. But there was other
and convincing testimony besides. I could tell it by my physical feelings,
by my viewpoint, by my enhanced zest for work and for play.

Purposely, for the first month I refrained from weighing myself. When I
did begin weighing at regular intervals I found I was losing at a rate of
between two and three pounds a week. Moreover, I had now proved to my own
satisfaction that within sane reasonable limitations I could resume eating
most of the things which formerly I ate to excess and which I had
altogether eliminated from my menus during the initiatory stages of
dieting.

About the time I emerged from the novitiate class I discerned yet one more
gratifying fact. If I were in the woods, camping and fishing, or hunting
or tramping or riding or taking any fairly arduous form of exercise, I
could eat pretty much anything and everything, no matter how fattening it
might be. Work in the open air whetted my appetite, but the added exertion
burned up the waste matter so that the surplus went into bodily strength
instead of into fatty layers. Consumption was larger, but assimilation was
perfect.

For my daily life at home, where I am writing this, I have cut out these
things: All the cereals; nearly all the white bread; all the hot bread;
practically all pastries except very light pastries; white potatoes
absolutely; rice to a large extent; sausages and fresh pork and nearly all
the ham; cream in my coffee and on fruits; and a few of the starchier
vegetables.

Of butter and of cheese and of nuts I eat perhaps one-third the amount I
used to eat, and of meats, roughly, one-half as much as before the dawn of
reason came. Of everything except the items I just have enumerated I eat
as freely as I please. And when a person begins to reckon up everything
else among the edibles--flesh, fowl, fish, berries, fruits, vegetables and
the rest he finds quite a sizable list.

I shall not pretend that I do not pine often for sundry tabooed things.
Take pies, now--if there is any person al