He always expressed astonishment at folks being able to sleep on feather beds, his aversion being founded on the fact that he had one night lain down on the hard ground with a single feather under him.  “An’ if I had sic a sarkfu’ o’ sair banes wi ae feather,” he argued, “what like maun it be wi’ a hale bed?”

Well, I can assure readers that whatever may be the troubles of a solitary nut in an oasis of good things, it is very different when nuts are taken alone or in a suitable and simple combination.  Most of our digestive troubles are due to an excess of proteid matter, which clogs up the system, and either lodges in the body in the shape of some morbid secretion, or tries to force its way out in an abnormal way, as by the skin.  Now, nuts are very rich in proteid, or flesh-forming matter, and it stands to reason, that if we superimpose them on an already full, or overfull, meal, the result is surfeit, and however wholesome or digestible this excess matter may be in itself, it may, and usually does, work harm in more or less obvious ways.

But curiously enough, this does not always work out with mathematical directness.  Most things in the physical, as in the metaphysical, world work out as Ruskin says “not mathematically, but chemically.”  Though this may seem a far-fetched simile in connection with our dinner, it is a true one.  To get back to our nuts.  If after a meal of several courses, rich in quality and variety, highly-spiced and flavoured, and perhaps interspersed with little piquant relishes, serving to whet the appetite for the next course, one takes only a very few nuts, or an apple, or a banana, the probability is that “these last” will give the most direct trouble.  The gastric juices may be already exhausted, and the nuts, therefore, lie a hard undigested mass on the stomach; or the apple digesting very quickly, and being ready to leave the stomach some hours before its other contents, but having to bide their time, ferments and gives off objectionable gases.  Thus, the innocent fruit gets the blame, and the fish, game, or meat go free.  Another way in which fruits may prove indigestible, through no fault of their own, is because of the unsuitable combination in which they are eaten.  Most nuts, with the exception of chestnuts, which are largely composed of starch, consist almost entirely of fat, which, unless it meets with an alkali to dissolve it, is digested with great difficulty.  The uric acid in flesh tends to harden this fat, and so retards digestion.

The medical faculty now recognise the nutritive properties of nuts, as also their wholesomeness and freedom from all toxic elements, and at all sanatoria for the treatment of rheumatic and gouty affections a nut and fruit diet is the established regime.  We need not, however, go to an expensive sanatorium to enjoy this food, but may cure, or better, prevent these diseases in our own homes.

They are, I believe, best in their natural state, along with fresh fruits, salads, and the like, but there are also many dainty dishes, in the composition of which they may be used with advantage.