"Then there came in this new Japanese business, and 'e'd 'ire a little smiling 'eathen to chuck 'im about 'is room for 'alf an hour every morning after breakfast.It got on my nerves after a while 'earing 'im being bumped on the floor every minute, or flung with 'is 'ead into the fire-place.But 'e always said it was doing 'im good.
'E'd argue that it freshened up 'is liver.It was 'is liver that 'e seemed to live for--didn't appear to 'ave any other interest in life.
It was the same with 'is food.One year it would be nothing but meat, and next door to raw at that.One of them medical papers 'ad suddenly discovered that we were intended to be a sort of wild beast.
The wonder to me is that 'e didn't go out 'unting chickens with a club, and bring 'em 'ome and eat 'em on the mat without any further 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 vegetariani** 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.'Esaid 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 believe me; although myself I'd rather 'ave died at fifty and got it over.Then another paper dug up from somewhere a sort of animated corpse that said was a 'undred and two, and attributed the unfortunate fact to 'is always 'aving 'ad 'is food as 'ot as 'e could swallow it.A bit of sense did begin to dawn upon 'im then, but too late in the day, I take it.'E'd played about with 'imself too long.
'E died at thirty-two, looking to all appearance sixty, and you can't say as 'ow it was the result of not taking advice."[Only just in time.]