For my midday meal I had more dry toast, a reduced portion of boiled tongue and a raw applesatisfying enough to some, I grant you, but to me no more than a tease to my palate. Long before three o'clock I knew exactly how a tapeworm feels when its landlord goes on a hunger strike. Every salivary gland I owned was standing on tiptoe screaming for help; every little mucous membrane had a sorrow all its own. Each separate fiber of my innermost being cried out for greases and for sugars and for the wonted starchy compounds for to stay it and for to comfort it.
I underwent pangs such as had not been mine since away back yonder in August of 1914, in the time of the sack of Belgium, when the Germans locked up five of us for a day and a night in a cow stable where no self-respecting cow would voluntarily have stayed, and, then sent us by train under guard on a three-day journey into Germany, yet all the while kept right on telling us we were not prisoners but guests of the German Army. And at the end of the third day we reached the unanimous conclusion among ourselves that the only outstanding distinction we could see, from where we sat, between being prisoners of the German Army and guests of the German Army was that from time to time they did feed the prisoners. For throughout the journey the eight of ussince by now our little party had grownlived rather simply and frugally and, I might say, sketchily on rations consisting of one loaf of soldiers' bread, one bottle of mineral water and a one-pound pot of sour and rancid honey which must have emanated in the first place from a lot of very morbid, low-minded bees.
However, in those exciting days there were many little moving distractions about to keep one from brooding o'ermuch on thoughts of lacking provender. I boast not, but merely utter a verity, when I state that every time I shook myself I shifted the center of population. Where we had been the lesser wild life of midcontinental Europe abounded. In the matter of a distinction which had come to me utterly without solicitation or effort on my part I have no desire to brag, but in justice to myselfand my boardersI must add that at that moment, of all the human beings in Central Europe, I was the most densely
inhabited. My companions scratched along, doing fairly well, too; but I led the fieldI was so much roomier than any one of them was.
But here aboard this Pullman on this, the dedicatory day of my self-imposed martyrdom, I could not lose myself as I had on that former historic occasion in the ardor of chasing the small game of the country. By four o'clock in the afternoon I could appreciate the sensations of a conch shell on a parlor whatnot. I had a feeling that if anyone were to press his ear up against me he would hear a murmuring sound as of distant sea waves. Yet, mark you, I held bravely out, fighting still the good fight. This, then, was my dinner, if such it might in truth be called: Clear soup, a smallish slice of rare roast beef cut shaving thin, gluten bread sparsely buttered, a cloud of watercress no larger than a man's hand, another raw apple and a bit of domestic cheesenothing rich, nothing exotic, no melting French fromages , no creamy Danish pastries.
Only when I reached my demi-tasse, which I took straight, did I permit myself a touch of luxury. I lit my cigar with a genuine imported Swedish parlor match.
Followed then the first comforting manifestation, the first gratefully registered taste of recompense for my privations. I had to speak that night and in a large hall, too, and I found my voice to be clearer and stronger than usual, and found, also, that I spoke with much less effort than usual. I was sure partial fasting during the day was bearing fruits in the evening, and I was right, as subsequent evening experiences proved to me. I had rather dreaded that hunger gripes would make my night a sleepless one, but it didn't happen. I may have dreamed longing dreams about victuals, but I tore off eight solid hours of unbridled andI dare sayuproarious rest.
CHAPTER X Wherein Our Hero Falters
Within the same week I took most joyful note of the fact that I was losing flesh in the vicinities where mainly I craved to lose it amidships and at the throat. I still had a double chin in front, but the third one, which I carried behind as a sparethe one which ran all the way round my neck and lapped at the back like a clergyman's collarwas melting away. And unless I was woefully mistaken, I no longer had to fight so desperate a battle with the waistband of my trousers when I dressed in the mornings.
I was not mistaken. Glory be and likewise selah! My first and second mezzanines were visibly shrinking. By these signs and portents was I stimulated to continue the campaign so auspiciously launched and so satisfactorily progressing.
I shall not deny that in the second week I did some backsliding. The swing of the tour carried me into the South. It was the South in the splendor of the young springtime when the cardinal bird sang his mating song. With brocading dandelions each pasture gloriously became even as the Field of the Cloth of Gold; and lo, the beginning of the strawberry shortcake season overlapped the last of the smoked-hog-jowl-and-turnip-greens period, and the voice of the turtle was heard in the land.