U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [557]
-497-man upon this earth I can admit to have been largely crowned with material and spiritual success. Perhaps it was my early training for the pulpit but I have always felt, and that feeling, Mr. Moorehouse, is not rare among the prominent businessmen in this country, that material suc-cess is not the only thing . . . there is the attainment of the spirit of service. That is why I say to you frankly that I have been grieved and wounded by this dark conspiracy. Who steals my purse steals trash but who would . . . what is it? . . . my memory's not what it was . . . my good name . . . Ah, yes, how do you do, Mr. Savage?" Dick was surprised by the wrench the handshake gave his arm. He found himself standing in front of a gaunt loosejointed old man with a shock of white hair and a big prognathous skul from which the sunburned skin hung in folds like the jowls of a birddog. J. W. seemed smal and meek beside him. "I'm very glad to meet you, sir," E. R. Bingham said. "I have often said to my girls that had I grown up in your generation I would have found happy and useful work in the field of publicrelations. But alas in my day the path was harder for a young man entering life with nothing but the excel ent tradition of moral fervor and natural religion I absorbed if I may say so with my mother's milk. We had to put our shoulders to the wheel in those days' and it was the wheel of an old muddy wagon drawn by mules, not the wheel of a luxurious motorcar." E. R. Bingham boomed his way into the diningroom. A covey of palefaced waiters gathered round, pul ing out chairs, setting the table, bringing menucards. "Boy, it is no use handing me the bil of fare," E. R. Bingham addressed the headwaiter. "I live by nature's law. I eat only a few nuts and vegetables and drink raw milk. . . . Bring me some cooked spinach, a plate of grated carrots and a glass of unpasteurized milk. . . . As a result, gentlemen, when I went a few days ago to a great physician at the request of one of the great lifeinsurance companies in this city he was
-498-dumbfounded when he examined me. He could hardly be-lieve that I was not tel ing a whopper when I told him I was seventyone. 'Mr. Bingham,' he said, 'you have the magnificent physique of a healthy athlete of fortyfive' . . . Feel that, young man." E. R. Bingham flexed his arm under Dick's nose. Dick gave the muscle a prod with two fingers. "A sledgehammer," Dick said, nodding his head. E. R. Bingham was already talking again: "You see I prac-tice what I preach, Mr. Moorehouse . . . and I expect others to do the same. . . . I may add that in the entire list of remedies and proprietary medicines control ed by Bingham Products and the Rugged Health Corporation, there is not a single one that contains a mineral, a drug or any other harmful ingredient. I have sacrificed time and time again hundreds of thousands of dol ars to strike from my list a concoction deemed injurious or habitforming by Dr. Gorman and the rest of the splendid men and women who make up our research department. Our medicines and our systems of diet and cure are nature's remedies, herbs and simples cul ed in the wilderness in the four corners of the globe according to the tradition of wise men and the findings of sound medical science."
"Would you have coffee now, Mr. Bingham, or later?"
"Coffee, sir, is a deadly poison, as are alcohol, tea and tobacco. If the shorthaired women and the longhaired men and the wildeyed cranks from the medical schools, who are trying to restrict the liberties of the American people to seek health and wel being, would restrict their activities to the elimination of these dangerous poisons that are sapping the virility of our young men and the fertility of our lovely American womanhood I would have no quarrel
with them. In fact I would do everything