"Hear, hear!" said the men.
"The nearer we live to nature, the better," said Senator Biggs
oracularly.
"Back to nature," shouted Mr. Moody through a clam.
"Exactly," Mr. Pierce said, smiling.
Mrs. Moody looked alarmed. "You don't mean doing without clothes--and
all that!" she protested.
"Surely!" Miss Summers said, holding up her beer glass. "A toast,
everybody! Back to nature, sans rats, sans rouge, sans stays, sans
everything. I'll need to wear a tag with my name on it. Nobody will
recognize me!"
Mr. Pierce got up again at the head of the long kitchen table and said
he merely meant rational living--more air, more exercise, simpler food
and better hours. It was being done now in a thousand fresh-air farms,
and succeeding. Men went back to their business clearer-headed and women
grew more beautiful.
At that, what with the reaction from sitting in the cold station, and
the beer and everything, they all grew enthusiastic. Doctor Barnes made
a speech, telling that he used to be puny and weak, and how he went
into training and became a pugilist, and how he'd fought the Tennessee
something or other--the men nodded as if they knew--and licked him in
forty seconds or forty rounds, I'm not sure which. The men were standing
on their chairs cheering for him, and even Mr. Jennings, who'd been
sitting and not saying much, said he thought probably there was
something in it.
They ended by agreeing to try it out for a week, beginning with the
morning, when everybody was to be down for breakfast by seven-thirty.
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