In both cases the sympathy and sentiment were the same, and the author believes it to be universal. All that is needed to guard against helplessness is concentration of interest, for a little time, on this one elementary need, and the full measure of reform will soon be in effective operation.
While the conferences above referred to were being held, the author had opportunity to learn the existing conditions, relative to the greatest and most fundamental needs in approaching and perfecting a reform of the kind recommended, and learned that uncertain, irregular, or otherwise faulty nourishment is the cause of much perversion among the poor, and is especially harmful to the young among them. The author had just completed his initial experiments, and had published the booklet "What Sense? or, Economic Nutrition," and by them saw a way to provide teachers, mothers, and other child protectors with a teachable theory of nutrition that seemed to him to be scientific but simple, and which had been most gratifyingly effective wherever it had been intelligently tried.
But in the course of these lecture conferences it developed that more than the unsupported word of a layman was necessary in order to even command attention in a matter that everybody thought they knew all about themselves, and in whose general opinion the whole world joined. It did not seem credible, although quite logical, that health, morals, temperament, physical efficiency, and all the requirements of virtue and good citizenship could be mended or modified by mere attention to the ingestion of food and more careful eating.
As time went on it seemed evident to the author that not only was a right intelligence, relative to the initial act of nutrition, helpful in conserving health, but that it was fundamentally necessary to physical efficiency, mental clearness, and moral tone, and that all work, which was done by educators without this basic knowledge as an underlying necessity of teaching or training, could but be simply ameliorative and not curative in its effect; and, failing to be able to say the convincing word himself, it seemed necessary for the author to interest the highest physiological authority in the subject and make demonstration a means of convincing them. This, in order that they might speak to deaf ears with the effectiveness of the megaphone, while poor lay I, the author, could not raise my voice above a whisper.
In transferring this book to the "A.B.C. Series," and linking it up with the "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition," and other books of the "Series," the megaphonic connection has been established, and now the attorney for the waifs is ready to turn on a renewed current of sympathy and see what will happen.
The work, as it originally shaped itself, was dropped by the author, for the time being, as being built on sand, if presented without a good theory of scientific feeding as one of the foundation principles, and hence these intervening five years have been employed in getting authority for the economic theory required.
These five years also have added time-proof to the personal experience of the author, and have added many confirmatory experiences to his own. Continued pursuit of the subject has also developed possibilities of endurance, efficiency, and happiness that were not known to exist in former times, so that we begin to doubt if the normal man or woman has been seen in the world since history has given us a record.
During these five years of study of the question, left incomplete in the present volume as first issued, only confirmatory evidence of the hopes expressed herein has been deduced. The author has had abundant opportunity to add experiences in England, Italy, and, in fact, all over Europe, and in this country, that strengthen the faith and call for action or guilt of infamous indifference. The work of Dr. Bernardo in England has progressed steadily, and each annual showing is better than the last, while the public demonstrations at Albert Hall, London, are becoming more intrinsically interesting than any other exhibitions or entertainments that are held in that great auditorium.
The Salvation Army work, too, has been closely inspected and followed, and, while its aims are more curative than preventive, and give promises in the future rather than in the immediate present, it cannot but meet with highest approval for what it does in a practical way among the degenerate. Quite recently General Booth has added a Department of Hygiene to his staff outfit, and the whole tendency of the work is improving and is already splendid. It is not yet broad enough, however, and does not deal with the basic necessities of complete nutrition reform applied to children.
The whole course of reform on charitable principles has been steadily progressive, but the most conclusive and convincing demonstration of possibilities, all the way from waif-saving to the last ultimate refinement of physical and mental reform, has been given us by two of the most modest and self-unconscious persons possible to imagine. To Dr. and Mrs. J. H. Kellogg, of Battle Creek, Michigan, we owe more than any of us can ever pay for a demonstration of humane possibilities, which proves the full contentions of this book most conclusively. Twenty-four of the most unfortunate of waifs, rescued and endowed with all the opportunity of respectable manhood and womanhood and good citizenship, is the record of this one little married but childless couple; and after that who shall ever dare to say that there should ever be any "Have-to-be-bad" persons to fill an altogether unnecessary "ten-per-cent-of-submerged-stratum" of society?
Some account of this family of true and practical salvation is given in the "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition" and in "The New Glutton or Epicure," and need not be repeated here, for without full appreciation of the contents of each of the books of the "A.B.C. Series" the argument of either is incomplete.
H. F.
Explanation of The A.B.C. Life Series
THE ESSENTIALS AND SEQUENCE IN LIFE
It would seem a considerable departure from the study of menticulture as advised in the author's book, "Menticulture," to jump at once to an investigation of the physiology and psychology of nutrition of the body and then over to the department of infant and child care and education as pursued in the crèche and in the kindergarten; but as a matter of fact, if study of the causation of human disabilities and misfortunes is attempted at all, the quest leads naturally into all the departments of human interest, and first into these primary departments.
The object of this statement is to link up the different publications of the writer into a chain of consistent suggestions intended to make life a more simple and agreeable problem than many of us too indifferent or otherwise inefficient and bad fellow-citizens make of it.
It is not an altogether unselfish effort on the part of the author of the A.B.C. Life Series to publish his findings. In the consideration of his own mental and physical happiness it is impossible to leave out environment, and all the units of humanity who inhabit the world are part of his and of each other's environment.
It would be rank presumption for any person, even though gifted with the means to circulate his suggestions as widely as possible, and armed with the power to compel the reading of his publications, to think that any suggestions of his could influence