These two terms are used loosely, as a rule, and taken to mean practically the same thing, but a sharp distinction is to be drawn between them always.

Appetite is the result of habit, the return of the meal hour, or the result of odors, tastes, or sight of food that tempts the desire to eat.

The gnawing that occurs always when the meal time is past, and that is so loosely called hunger, is nothing but the irritation suffered by an empty stomach carrying residues in acid state from the last meal eaten, relieved, to be sure, by eating, as dilution of the residue renders it less irritating.

This discomfort is referred to the pit of the stomach, and is variously referred to as a sinking feeling, a gnawing sensation, a grinding, or various other terms that indicate the discomfort its presence occasions.

It is quite unlikely that one person in a thousand has ever experienced the difference in sensations between this surpassed habit appetite and true hunger, for seldom is any one ever allowed to feel the sensation in this land of plenty and frequent eating habits.

The habit of many of the early civilisations was to eat but one meal a day, and this in the evening, after the activities of the chase, the fight or the work were ended, and it is to be supposed that these people did not have the gnawing in the pit of the national stomach or they would never have cultivated such habits.

The armies of Rome and Greece when at their height of efficiency, and when both kingdoms were predominant on account of their military strength, ate but one meal a day, and this in the evening, and it is reported of the Roman army that the combined weight of armour and equipment was so great that the average modern soldier could not carry it and fight, while the Roman soldier ran at good speed into battle, fully encumbered.

Yet these men did this on an empty stomach, and seemed to have been mighty efficient as fighters, judging by the strength of armies they conquered.

Every disagreeable symptom of the empty stomach is due to appetite, a habit affair, and the sensation comes from the retention in the stomach of acid debris left from the digestion of the last meal.

If one resists the compelling desire to eat at such times, or if something happens to divert entirely all thought of food, the feeling passes, and one can then forget the supposed need of food, and at the next meal time there will not be the disagreeable gnawing sensation, but habit alone calls for food, and the usual regular diner feels that he has taken serious chances on his life or future efficiency by neglecting even this one wholly superfluous meal.

If one goes without eating for two or three days this desire for food wholly leaves, and the most perfect indifference toward all food sets in, which as ordinarily interpreted would mean the beginning of death from starvation.

If one can shake this superstition, this atavistic fear of starvation, he can then begin really to enjoy living, for there is a feeling of release from the compulsion of the table that compares with what Christian must have felt, in Pilgrim's Progress, when his burden of sin rolled off at the foot of the cross. He afterward traveled so much lighter and felt such relief that the remainder of his journey was comparatively easy. Even so, when one first feels this sudden realization of release from the compulsion of the table, there is a most wonderfully unlifted sensation that looks forward to far better things in the future.

The writer well remembers going through this stage for the first time, and never since then, now twenty-four years ago, has he felt a return of this slavery to the table that we all subconsciously feel, whether we know it or not.

This was a divorce from the table habits of all the years preceding, when he would have looked with horror on a proposition that would take him too far from a base of supplies.

Now, while writing these lines, he is on the fourth week of a self-imposed fast, to be followed by an equal period of diet restricted solely to grapes, the thirty-one days of July fasting, and the thirty-one days of August on a strict grape diet.

This is the yearly housecleaning, not strictly necessary, perhaps, as the habit is to eat but one meal a day all through the year, and this chiefly vegetables and fruits, and if concentrated foods are used, as happens once or twice in a week, these are so combined as to prevent fermentation.

Yet he enjoys the table perhaps better than the average man, but never with the feeling of compulsion that ties man close to his base of supplies.

This month of fasting is taken close, very close, to Nature in a little cottage on the south shore of Lake Erie, close to the water, where nude sun bathing is enjoyed every bright day, and where living is largely in the raw, nude state in which the skin has an opportunity to regain its natural instincts and effectiveness as the outer organ of elimination.

Appetite, there is none, not the slightest desire for food of any kind, a little lemon juice in the water drunk, if craved, perhaps a bite of orange or a few grapes, to relieve the disagreeable taste of the fasting mouth, being the nearest approach to food, and this taken not from any sense of hunger or appetite, but for comfort only, as the fasting mouth is disagreeable always, giving evidence of the character of material the body is unloading through the digestive tract.

A spring exerciser is used daily and records the same number of pulls as when eating is at the average habit, and without the sense of fatigue that usually accompanies this form of exercise.

This book must be completed and ready for the printer before the end of July, when camp is broken and the office is again resumed in Buffalo, and but twelve days are allotted to this work, three of these still remaining, so we must hurry.

A voluminous mail has to be answered once every week, the week-end passed at Crystal Beach with the family, leaving but four days each week for writing, and as this was not begun till the second week at camp the writing days were reduced then to twelve for the remaining three weeks of the month.