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MASTICATION.
25

everything else for the time being. It should literally absorb your entire attention. Every worry in reference to business, or other trouble, should be discarded absolutely from the mind. If you are not able to discard all these interferences with your dietetic enjoyment you are eating without sufficient appetite, and you should immediately cease, and wait for an appetite which will enable you to completely lose all external thoughts in the pleasure of satisfying this natural demand of the body.

Then sit down to feast. Eat very, very slowly. Try to see how much enjoyment you can extract from every mouthful of food. Retain it in the mouth, chewing vigorously all the while, until it is absolutely reduced to a liquid, and until it is swallowed involuntarily. Gladstone's rule of chewing every morsel thirty-two times before swallowing is practically no guide for you. Even the soft foods, like mashed potatoes, for instance, will have to be chewed from thirty to fifty times in order to reduce them completely to a liquid, and to extract all the delicacy of flavor. Dwell on every