Food Problem Individualised 207 



The porridge was boiled in new milk instead of 

 water, and after a little training I found the thing 

 delicious. This dinner, costing less than three- 

 pence, is better (for me at least) than the dinners 

 for which I have so often paid five or six shillings 

 in the West End ; but I have to confess that its 

 proper appreciation implies an amount of moral 

 discipline which, at any time of life, is rather 

 trying in the initial experience. It is like turning 

 an Irishman into a Scotchman after forty. 



Such is the main dietary, but still varied by an 

 occasional chicken we do not eat on principle, 

 and I must admit that the dreadful virtues of the 

 new scheme have been forced on us by necessity. 

 It costs me less than a shilling a day, and I could 

 never get my modest meals in London at less than 

 ten shillings a day. After three months of it, the 

 taste for meat has diminished ; so has the need for 

 tobacco and tea, as if an improved state of nerve 

 were steadily raising me to independence of 

 stimulants and sedatives alike. For the first time 

 in twenty years I can sit down and write a 

 chapter without the pipe. My health is con- 

 sciously better, I am more than a stone heavier, 

 and the housekeeper expands at a rate more rapid 

 still. The " improvement " in us, coincident 

 with the war, is a subject of local comment. 



I can do more work. I am much less tired 

 after it. I can get out of bed an hour earlier. 

 The world appears to me a better place. To the 

 working man in the English town, dependent on 

 the foreign producer, and menaced by the German 



