the house abandoned for ever. It was said that some one had been known to come and stand in the garden and gaze upon the ruin that was being made, and then go away again leaving Time to do its worst. We were glad to leave it behind, and drive through an avenue of blossoming chestnut-trees towards the sunset. Already a thick white mist was spreading over the sea. It was well to be indoors. Our companions wondered if it would blot out the comet that on clear evenings was to be seen in the western sky. A VEGETARIAN SANATORIUM. After we left the Highlands and before we set out on our travels into England and elsewhere, we had for a time a most entertaining old servant. She came to us plainly in need of employment, for her garments were a rusty black and her luggage conspicuously small. She was an ancient dame, dim-sighted and wornlooking, but she professed a considerable knowledge of cooking, and as we had suffered much from a lack of this in recent occupants of our kitchen, we engaged her. She had her faults, like most of us, but she must at least at one time have known something of the culinary art; she was a kindly soul, and her conversation was never dull. heard much of her former glories in the kitchens of the great, and if in the forgetfulness of age she let the roast burn to a cinder, she was always ready with sauces and gravies to make up for it, and was never under any circumstances put out. Had she not cooked for Sir Somebody of Somewhere when "sixty of the highest in the land sat down at his table every day of the year. It sounded like We old baronial days to listen to her. But it was Janet's comfort to the invalid that I was about to record, for its applicability will be found to be universal. "You must just be like a young lady I had once," she told me. "Such a sweet young lady she was, my dear, but she began to get blind. Well, she went to London to the great doctors there, but they could do nothing at all in the world for her, and she got quite blind." She paused and looked at at me. "Dear me, Janet," said I, "that was very sad." "Wasn't it indeed sad?" she went on impressively. "But she was a brave young lady. She just made up her mind at once and learned the deaf and dumb alphabet." I was surprised. "The deaf and dumb alphabet! Was she deaf and dumb, then?" I asked. "No, no, my dear, she was blind," said Janet cheerfully and conclusively. A little reflection convinced me that my old friend was confusing the Braille characters with the deaf and dumb alphabet, but I thought the counsel as applied to my hob bling steps delightful. Not meat was referred to with being content, however, with making up my mind and learning the language of the deaf and dumb, I experimented for a time upon a vegetarian cure for rheumatism, and found myself on a certain winter's day driving up to the door of a kind of sanatorium devoted to this treatment. Not to be too precise in the location of the place, it was somewhere in the North of England, and was a rather imposing building of grey stone set upon the edge of a pine wood. Inside, things looked bright and comfortable. There were cosy lounges in the rooms, and great log-fires burning everywhere. Despite this I felt rather strange and forlorn to begin with, and I remember that I plunged straightway into a book by way of refuge from a strange place and strange people. Dinner brought me in contact with the latter, and initiated me at once into the mysteries of "The Diet." I found myself in an atmosphere of earnest enthusiasm that seemed more appropriate to a religion than to a method of feeding. We were informed of the number of grains of nourishment contained in each of the dainty dishes set before us, and every now and then some one rose from his or her place at table and solemnly weighed bread or cheese or nuts in a scale, commenting meantime in happy tones on the amount of these they were now able to "get in " during the day. Any one unable to eat his "quantities" was tenderly commiserated. Butcher horror by those firmly established in the faith, and tea and coffee were taboo. One gathered that not only would rheumatism and kindred bodily ills disappear for ever under the new diet, but that fallen human nature would be completely reformed by it. "What made you go in for 'The Diet,' Mr?" I heard a lady ask her neighbour. "A desire for the highest, madam," he replied with perfect seri ousness. Such a spirit is catching, and I had not been many days an inmate of the Sanatorium before I too saw visions of a rejuvenated earth, whose inhabitants were never ill because they lived on bread and cheese and apples and nuts and milk, and never starving, because such food was so cheap that there would always be abundance of it to go round. How easy for the working-man to rear his hungry family upon lentils. And then, after all the self-discipline involved in such simple and Spartan fare, how natural to expect humanity to be good. Alcohol was taboo "The Diet." Teetotalism was a part, though but a small part, of the propaganda. on In all seriousness, however, "The Diet" had its triumphs. We had among us an old gentleman of eighty, who a few years before had been so crippled by rheumatism that he could hardly totter across his room. Now his portrait might have adorned a vegetarian advertisement, and come rain come storm he walked his eight miles every day of his life. There was a young fellow who came occasionally for a week-end to see how his invalid mother was doing, and who from being a wretchedly delicate lad had become on "The Diet" strong and energetic and able for the responsibilities of a great business enterprise -a marvel to the doctors who had physicked him for years to no purpose. There was, too, at the time I arrived, an elderly lady whom one pitied more than all the rheumatic patients how ever crippled they might be. She had been a teacher, and had held good posts in her profession till overwork had led to a nervous breakdown, from which she had never wholly recovered. A terrible depression gripped her, so that it hurt one to look at her and see the constant misery in her face. She could not read or write or work for any length of time, and wandered about like a poor melancholy ghost. I taught her some games of patience one night, and her effort to enjoy them was a little sad to look at. She had spent all her savings in trying to get cured, and now as a sort of forlorn hope some friends who believed in "The Diet" had sent her here for six weeks, I think it was. At the end of the time she left us, very cast down and no better, and I for one thought the treatment had been but a Will-o'-the-wisp for the poor, burdened lady. Then one day, some weeks afterwards, I was sitting reading in the drawingroom when she appeared in the doorway, her eyes sparkling and her lips smiling. There were newcomers in the room, strangers to her, and she came over to where I sat and told me in a low voice that she was well again. She said that all of a sudden one day a cloud seemed to lift off her mind and spirit, and the world was worth living in again. It was a pleasure to see her and to hear her, and know that she was fit for work again and need not fear the grim wolf at the door. And it was all "The Diet," the blessed "Diet," she declared. There were others who sang "The Diet's" praises for the same reason. "I used to be afraid to be alone with & razor," one stalwart man declared repeatedly. "But since I went on 'The Diet' I'm not afraid of any responsibility. Why, I married my wife and bought a property both in the same week.' It was exactly like listening to advertisements of a quack medicine, but it was something to see the enthusiastic patients walking about before one's eyes, living trophies of this new panacea for all the ills that flesh is heir to. "Do you think it will cure me?" I asked the doctor. "Of course it will, if you stick to it," he told me. I smiled at the idea of not sticking to it. It was an excellent diet! We had a cook who served up delectable dishes, surely sufficient to reconcile even a gourmand to the sacrifice of such ordinary things as butcher meat and tea. "There is no danger of my not sticking to it," I declared, and when I heard of former visitors to the Sanatorium that they had gone แ back to the flesh - pots of Egypt, I fear I scorned them for weak and unstable souls. Well, one lives and learns! For the moment I was prepared to be enthusiastic, and these apostles of a new faith interested me immensely. We had the most strangely diverse company gathered round our vegetarian board - people of different ranks in society and of the most extraordinarily varied creeds. We had Buddhists, Theosophists, passionately convinced Agnostics, Socialists, and followers of Tolstoi and of the Rev. R. J. Campbell. One delightful old Scotsman, brought up, I fancy, like myself on porridge and the Shorter Catechism, used to talk to me occasionally as though we were two sane mortals in a mad world. He was a strict Sabbatarian, and knew all about the Scottish Church Case. To the benighted Buddhists around us the names of Free and Wee Free and Legal Free and United Free were alike unknown, and it was pleasant in that alien land to hear my countryman abuse the party to which I had the honour to belong. A quality that seemed to belong to all our enthusiasts was sincerity. I heard strange creeds professed by people who were clearly prepared to saorifice much to them. "The Diet plus the teachings of Tolstoi would save the world," said one man who had given up much to the earnest propagation of both these gospels. A Socialist, who had put a considerable part of his capital into building improved houses for the slum dwellers, had a rare passion for his kind, and seemed to have an infinite patience for the poor. They worked havoc with his fine model buildings, and kept coals in the baths with which he had supplied them, but he was nothing daunted. He thought the Christian faith the most dangerous of errors, yet he himself reminded one at times of the Good Samaritan. Perhaps he was what a friend of mine calls a subconscious Christian. One of our most interesting guests came to recruit after prison. She was a well-known militant Suffragette, and I had associated her name with all sorts of wild warfare with policemen, and I know not what of stone-throwing and windowbreaking. To my amazement she proved to be white-haired and sweet-faced; a frail old lady, with a worn look and brave eyes. I heard that she had given up a beautiful country house in her old age to go and live among the London poor, and spend her strength and substance for the women-workers of the slums. Some one referred rather slightingly to "The Cause one day in her presence, and I saw her laces quiver and her old delicate hands tremble as she spoke with studied gentleness in its defence. Looking at her, and remembering her militant record, I could not but sympathise with the old professor who, hearing some startling story of a lady he admired, and being asked by one of his students if he thought such conduct "lady like," replied loyally: "It is sufficient to make it ladylike, young man, that a lady did it." If beautiful, gentle, old ladies find themselves driven to throw stones, I said to myself in a heat of admiration, surely some one should be at hand to pick them respectfully up again! Surely all whitehaired grandmammas should have votes if they want them! Surely, if nothing else can be done, the present franchise should be made transferable, like some sorts of tickets, so that chivalrous politicians might hand votes to dear old ladies, as they might offer seats in a tramcar. Free, gratis, and for nothing, I would present to the Government this solution of a difficult problem. How graceful an element it would introduce into the political arena! How much, much safer than adult suffrage would it be! How sweetly "Please, take mine," would fall upon the public ear! People came and went in the Vegetarian Sanatorium. Sometimes we were a small, a small, quiet company; sometimes, and especially for week-ends, the big house would be full. Once we had the place packed for a lecture on "The Diet" by a smart Society lady, who was one of its most fervent apostles. We had an influx of visitors that day from the neighbouring town. Coffee that wasn't coffee, and cocoa that wasn't cocoa, were served in the entrance - hall. Delicious cakes compensated for the absence of tea, and there exhibition of vegetarian foods that looked con The lec vincingly delicious. turer painted the horrid nature of a meat diet, and unfolded its dire results to the human frame with such eloquence that quite a number of ladies went home and ordered vegetarian dinners for that very evening. We heard afterwards that there had been not a little unpleasantness in some happy homes when hungry husbands found themselves confronted by these unexpected repasts! For myself the time came, alas! when I deserted basely from the new doctrines. At first all went happily, and I actually got well enough to go for two or three little bicycle rides and to walk more than a mile a-day; but this happy state of affairs did not last long. I began slowly but surely to loathe the sight of any portion of "The Diet," and when after many months of struggle I gave it up for good and all, the only articles of food I could be induced to eat were beefsteaks and mutton-chops. Perforce I was a renegade. I think that, perhaps, if I had gone much more slowly, and had taken a year instead of a few weeks to change my diet, things might have been different; but I do not know, since what is one man's meat is another man's poison. People who get cured of rheumatism or anything else by this vegetarian method are people who not only like it, but who go on liking it in its simplest form, and who can sit down happily to endless repasts of bread and milk and cheese and fruit. The old gentleman of eighty who |