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How can we get a sound body from meal time and evenings and parts 

 of Sunday? How do you do your eating? And what do you eat at your 

 house? You know it is a very interesting thing to go around and see how 

 and what folks eat. Don't you like to eat at other folks' houses? Not at 

 all to criticize, but to get an idea what other folks talk about, and whether 

 other folks cook the same everlasting meat and potatoes, bread and biscuits. 

 Sometimes when we have been visiting we come home and find that our own 

 things taste awfully good, don't they? And yet it was fun to taste other 

 folks' things. Kindly comparisons are both stimulating and heplful and we 

 ought to "visit around" all we possibly can. 



LEISURE AT MEAL TIME. 



But how can we use our meal times? Well, for one thing we can eat 

 slowly. Some say, "I don't have time to eat slowly, I am too busy." I 

 can tell you one thing, and if there is a doctor here in the audience he will 

 bear me out, the man who eats too fast wastes time. The man who eats 

 slowly conserves his time because he will have a good, sound digestion 

 and he can get more done when he starts to work. The man who bolts his 

 food may get through today all right, maybe next week, maybe next year, 

 but some time he is going to pay for his haste with lowered efficiency. 

 We working folks can't afford to hurry with our meals. If a man is rich, 

 maybe he can afford to rush through his eating, but you and I who are 

 plain working folks must be efficient, must be on the job, so we must eat 

 leisurely to ensure economy of health. 



There is nothing like talk along with a leisurely meal to make good 

 digestion sound bodies and an optimistic soul. We all have phonographs. 

 The other evening I was reading in one of the current issues of a popular 

 magazine about how phonograph records are made and I thought then, 

 as I have thought many times, what fun it would be to have one of those 

 little record making apparatus right in our homes, so we could just turn 

 a crank once in a while and get a record of what was said and then turn 

 it on some other time to hear the record. Suppose you had one of those 

 things hidden in the wall of your dining room and every time you sat 

 down at the table you pressed the button and everything that was said, 

 grunted and done was recorded, when folks were around to call on Sunday 

 you could get that record and play it for them. Do you think that might 

 be funny? Well, perhaps, but it might be embarrassing sometimes too. 

 I don't know whether we would always like to hear those records. [Laugh- 

 ter.] The first time you sit down at the table after you get home just pre- 

 tend that you are pressing a button and starting a record and then think 

 whether you would like the resulting record. Would you pay fifty cents for 

 it? Or eighty-five. [Laughter.] 



Do you like to hear the news of the day talked about? Of course, 

 sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. At our house we never talk 

 about money at the table, except once a year when we make the budget. 

 Budgets, as you know are my hobby. But folks do get into a rut even if 

 they don't talk about money. However, I will say this, I believe talking 

 about money is better than talking about nothing. I went on a visit at 

 one time where they didn't talk at all. Of course, that was a beautiful 

 chance for me, but still I didn't like it. I don't like to be the sole talker 

 all the time at meal time, I would rather listen to some back talk it is 

 more inspiring. I think any talking is better than none at all, but the 

 higher the grade of talking the more worth while is the meal time, and 

 the better and more efficient will be the folks who get their nourishment 

 around the hospitable, friendly and talkative board. Did you ever try 

 having one meal a week when you could sit at the table as long as you 

 wanted to and talk about anything you choose? We started that three or 

 four years ago at our house. We choose one meal on Sunday, every Sunday, 

 sometimes it is lunch, sometimes we have breakfast, lunch and supper 

 and sometimes we have breakfast, dinner and tea, just according to our 

 notion, but one of those three meals we plan so we can sit at the table 



