The Food Cure

From The Topeka State Journal, April 12, 1913.
 By Roy K. Moulton.
 

 Abijah Binks was noted for his great array of wealth;
 In fact he had most everything excepting perfect health.
 Long years ago the doctors said that he was doomed to die,
 And nothing seemed to do him good, no matter what he’d try.
 He left off eating anything excepting breakfast food,
 He never tackled corn beef hash or anything so rude.
 A pancake made him turn away in horror and disgust;
 To starve himself to death to live, it seemed Abijah must.
 His liver was all out of whack, his nerves were all askew,
 Dyspepsia racked his feeble frame, no matter what he’d do.
 He tried mud baths and went abroad to take a famous cure,
 But still he kept on fading in a manner slow but sure.
 He licked up patent medicines for twenty years or more,
 Until he felt just like he was a corner druggist’s store.
 He ate so much digested food, he often used to say
 He somehow felt that he was just a walking bale of hay.
 With all his wealth, life held but naught for this old man forlorn;
 He often wished that he was dead or never had been born.
 One melancholy day he thought his own life he would take;
 His suicide should come about by eating sirloin steak.
 He ate a nice big juicy one and laid him down to die,
 But got up feeling quite refreshed, and then he tackled pie.
 The pie refused to take him off, and in a frenzied mood
 He ate a can of pork and beans and quit his breakfast food.
 For seven weeks, he tried and tried to kill himself that way;
 He kept on growing heavier and each succeeding day
 He took a dose of hardy food that was a little worse;
 But even sauerkraut and pickled tripe refused to call the hearse.
 At last he gave up in despair for he was growing fat.
 He kept on eating fiendish things and then decided that
 If he must live, he’d do it right and eat whatever he liked,
 And seven doctors gave him up and packed their kits and hiked.
 This happened many years ago, and Bige is eighty-one,
 And feels just like a frisky kid whose life has but begun.