Part 1

NO FOOD WITH MY MEALS

BOOKS BY

FANNIE HURST

JUST AROUND THE CORNER EVERY SOUL HATH ITS SONG GASLIGHT SONATAS HUMORESQUE STAR DUST THE VERTICAL CITY LUMMOX APPASSIONATA MANNEQUIN SONG OF LIFE A PRESIDENT IS BORN PROCESSION FIVE AND TEN BACK STREET IMITATION OF LIFE ANITRA’S DANCE

NO FOOD WITH MY MEALS

Fannie Hurst

1935

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON

NO FOOD WITH MY MEALS

Copyright, 1935, by Fannie Hurst

Printed in the United States of America

All rights in this book are reserved. It may not be used for dramatic, motion- or talking-picture purposes without written authorization from the holder of these rights. Nor may the text or part thereof be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing. For information address: Harper & Brothers, 49 East 33rd Street, New York, N. Y.

FIRST EDITION

A-K

NO FOOD WITH MY MEALS

Sometimes, regarding my slimmed human envelope, which at best seems designed more for service than beauty, I do ponder.

Not so much upon its frailty, which has been achieved at the cost of no food with my meals, but upon the frailty of the spiritual inhabitant of that envelope.

Regarding that spiritual inhabitant at the restless business of trying to learn to live in her house of clay, faint ironic laughter, the kind apt to be induced by a breakfast of lemon juice and hot water, rumbles along the inner me.

Some women are born frail. Some have frailty thrust upon them. Still others achieve it, and at what price glory!

Trivia, you say?

Not at all.

What is trivia, and what is not?

If, by virtue of its relativity to my concerns, the dahlia in my garden, the color of my tweeds, the nick in my dining-room table, or the market price of strawberries become important, then they are important. Everything or nothing matters.

When even half of one hundred and twenty-three million human beings on a North American continent begins to care passionately about adhering in standards of beauty to formulae concocted somewhere between anywhere and Hollywood, then that state of mind becomes important. Sufficiently so to create neurosis, psychosis, and acidosis.

No state of mind or body flecked with evidence of phobia can remain trivial, no matter how trivial the minds and bodies themselves.

It was about four years ago that the slimming phobia of my sex and era first began to fleck me with its rabies-like foam.

Up to that period, although overweight by a not inconsiderable poundage, I had not given complete rein to the latent unease which sporadically smote me at my abundance.

In fact, overweight from my advent as an eleven-pound baby, there was a brief period around adolescence when my opulence seemed something of an asset.