fuss. For drink it would be boiling water that burnt my fingers
merely 'andling the glass. Then some other crank came out with the
information that every other crank was wrong--which, taken by itself,
sounds natural enough--that meat was fatal to the 'uman system. Upon
that 'e becomes all at once a raging, tearing vegetarian, and trouble
enough I 'ad learning twenty different ways of cooking beans, which
didn't make, so far as I could ever see, the slightest difference--
beans they were, and beans they tasted like, whether you called them
ragout a la maison, or cutlets a la Pompadour. But it seemed to
please 'im.

[He was never pig-headed.]

"Then vegetarianism turned out to be the mistake of our lives. It
seemed we made an error giving up monkeys' food. That was our
natural victuals; nuts with occasional bananas. As I used to tell
'im, if that was so, then for all we 'ad got out of it we might just
as well have stopped up a tree--saved rent and shoe leather. But 'e
was one of that sort that don't seem able to 'elp believing
everything they read in print. If one of those papers 'ad told 'im
to live on the shells and throw away the nuts, 'e'd have made a
conscientious endeavour to do so, contending that 'is failure to
digest them was merely the result of vicious training--didn't seem to
'ave any likes or dislikes of 'is own. You might 'ave thought 'e was
just a bit of public property made to be experimented upon.

"One of the daily papers interviewed an old gent, as said 'e was a
'undred, and I will say from 'is picture as any'ow 'e looked it. 'E
said it was all the result of never 'aving swallowed anything 'ot,
upon which my gentleman for a week lives on cold porridge, if you'll