CAPTAIN CRAKE CARRIES ON

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22805, 2 September 1939, Page 19

CAPTAIN CRAKE CARRIES ON

(SPECXiXBI WEITTEST TOR THE PBESS.) [By ZENOBIAI

4^ r pHERE is one thing for which I we should all be thankful in these anxious times!” said Miss “Is there?” X said. “®ur modern knowledge of diet,” said Miss Crake. “Our wonderful modern knowledge of how to be happy, healthy, hearty people! Think of the errors of diet people used to commit before they knew what was bad for them. Bread, for instance!” “People still eat bread,” I said. “But too much bread is so. clogging to the system! And meat, so hardening to the arteries. Fat, you knqw, so acid forming. Sugar, too, so destructive to the teeth, so terribly bad!” “And fish,” I said. “Fish, is very bad.” Miss Crake was taken aback. “Oh, no!” she said. “Fish is good!” “Is it?” “I have never heard anything against fish!” “Haven’t you?” “But tea,” said Miss Crake. “That’s bad. Too much salt is bad.” “And mustard,” I said. Miss Crake looked doubtful. “Do you think so? I understand a little mustard, ginger, spice, and so on, tones up the digestion!” “I must have meant the effect on the nervous system,” I said. “But that can be prevented,” said Miss Crake. . “Dry meals—so important! Father and I never drink with our meals. And *e wonderful thing about living on proper kinds of foods, is that one needs to eat less and less! Look at Father!” “What’s that?” shouted Captain Crake, opening his eyes. “I was just saying, Father, that you eat less and less!” cried Miss Crake. “Mess?” shouted Captain Crake. “Where?” “Father lives almost entirely on prune pulp in these days,” Miss Crake told me in a hushed voice. “He has prune pulp and milk and a lettuce leaf for lunch; and I give (him another dish of prune pulp for dinner! But, would you believe it, he doesn’t eat it!” “Not really?” I said. “He simply doesn’t require it!” “Well!” I said. “That’s splendid!” “He doesn’t require any dinrfcr at all. In the last six months he has eaten less and less, and now he weighs more and more. All due to diet, to eliminating poisonous combinations of starch and proteins; bread taken with meat or fish, foods coated in fat —!” “Do you know,” I said. “I shall really have to go. I have a letter to post before five. I enjoyed your bran biscuits so much!”

. . . All due to diet, you know! No poisonous combinations of potatoes and fish or meat; no fried foods, no cloying bread . . . !” i Captain Crake and I walked down the main street towards the shops, and I did my best to make-con-versation. - “It’s a lovely day!” I cried. “Not too far for me!” shouted Captain Crake. “I could walk fifty ' mile!” “You seem pretty fit!”-I screamed. “Not me!” said Captain Crake. “Who said I had a fit?” “I didn’t say you had a fit!” I shouted. “Never had a fit in my life!” I felt I had better not continue, and as we passed the local grocer’s shop, I pretended to be very- interested in a can of peas in- the window. v When I looked round, to my astonishment. Captain Crake had completely disappeared. With his stick, his shout, and his many woollen mufflers, he had vanished-alto-gether. . • .' ; He was thin, but not thin enough to have blown away; old, but not old enough to have scattered in dust. Puzzled and in doubt about what I shoud do, I walked on and posted my letter; and then as I turned and walked back, at the point where he had disappeared, abruptly he appeared again—from the door of a fish-and-chip shop. “Hello!” I said. “I lost you!” “Cost me?” shouted the Captain. “Fourpence a piece, with the chips thrown in, and I have three pieces a day, A good enough meal for any man!” He opened the parcel, and ate as we walked along the street. “Not hungry these nights,” he shouted. “Neverl” i “Does your daughter know why?” I shouted. “Eh?” shouted Captain Crake. “Do you eat the chips with the fish,” I cried. “Or do you keep them until later?” “Eh?” • I knew I would never make him understand. Besides, he was eating the fried fish with the chins already; he didn’t seem to care that both were coated*'with fat. . “Ah, well.” I sai|b “Fish is ■

“So glad to have seen you!” said Miss Crake. “And you’ll be able to walk down the road with Father. At a quarter to five every day Father goes walk. Quite a new thing, he never used to. stir out