MY TWELVE DAYS' FAST.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 448, 16 March 1912, Page 7

MY TWELVE DAYS' FAST.

A MASSAGE AND A COLD SHOWER. I was very hungry for the first lay of the twelve days of fasting I nad undertaken—the unwholesome, ravening sort of hunger that all dyspeptics know. I had a little hunger the second morning, and thereafter, to my very great astonishment, no hunger whatever—no more interest in food than if I had never known the taste of it. Previous to the fast I had had a headache every day for two or three weeks. It lasted through the first day and then disappeared—never to return. I felt every weak the second day, and a little dizzy on arising. I went out of doors and lay in the sun all day, reading; and. the same for the third and fourth days—in intense physical lassitude, but with great clearness of mind. After the fifth day I felt stronger, and walked a good deal, and I also began some writing. No phase of the experience surprised me more than the activity of my mind ; I read and wrote more than I had dared to do for years be:ore. During the first four days I lost afteen pounds in weight—something which, I have since learned, was a sign of the extremely poor state of my tissues. Thereafter I lost only two pounds in weight in eight days —an equally unusual phenomenon. I slept well throughout the fast. About the middle of each day I would feel weak, but a massage and cold shower would refresh me. Towards the, end I began to find that in walking about I would grow tired in the legs, and as I did not wish to lie in bed I broke the fast after the twelfth day with some orange-juice—Upton Sinclair, in the ''Contemporary Review."