Part 1

Transcriber’s Note: This text is reproduced with its original printing errors intact, save for minor amendments to punctuation, capitalisation and word spacing. The author was prone to misquoting poetry, the typesetter was apparently not being paid enough to ensure accuracy, and it doesn’t seem a proofreader was asked to participate at all. The best laid schemes o’ “mince” and men have indeed gone aft agley.

OAT MEAL THE War Winner

BY J. R. Grieve, M. D. Acting Assistant Surgeon U. S. Army, 1865

Copyright Applied for. Price Ten Cents.

“OATMEAL”

BEING GLIMPSES AN REMINISENCES OF SCOTLAND AND ITS PEOPLE.

By J. R. Grieve, M.D.

INTRODUCTION.

At the present time when every one is being urged to bend every energy toward the conservation of food supplies, it is surprising to me that so little has been written in behalf of the extraordinary value of oatmeal as a diet on which people can live and continue more healthy than on any other cereal in the world.

I wish to present =facts=, not =theories=. I wish to tell of what I know personally on this subject. I have not consulted any of the laboratories of research or taken for granted any data from the many-published statistics of individual food sufficiency for sustaining life, but I have only taken =facts= and invite my readers to form their own conclusions.

My father was a successful farmer in Perthshire, Scotland, and employed quite a number of ploughmen. His men were always big strapping fellows, weighing on an average from one hundred and fifty to one hundred and seventy pouds and as strong as oxen. None of those men ever saw a two-bushel sack of grain because we never had such sacks. What they were acquainted with and were accustomed to handle were four-bushel sacks of wheat, weighing sixty-four pounds per bushel, barley weighing fifty-six pounds per bushel. These sacks they would carry on their back and load on their carts and, after being hauled to the city, would again shoulder them and carry them up two and sometimes three flights of stairs in the warehouses. There were few elevators in those days.

Now what had those men for breakfast that morning? Certainly not beefsteak, ham and eggs, toast, or biscuits. No, they had a large bowlful of bcrose. Each man takes his large wooden bowl and puts into it three or four handfuls of oatmeal, a big pinch of salt, then pours boiling water on it, stirs it with the handle of his spoon, adds sweet milk, and eats his breakfast. When the noon hour comes he goes through the same process; and after the work is finished for the day he generally has a bowl of oatmeal parridge.

The whole time occupied is probably ten minutes. Then after smoking a pipe for ten minute more he is ready for a day of strenuous work. Each man possesses a half-gallon tin bucket, and that is filled at the dairy every morning before breakfast with sweet milk, and that lasts him for the day. No labor is too hard for those men. They can stand any strain put before them and never complain of being hungry. I never heard the least complaint of indigeston, and the doctor would have starved to death if he had depended on these ploughmen for patients. The allowance of meal is seventy pounds every four weeks, and that is all you require to give them. Often these men don’t see a piece of meat in months and very seldom do they eat wheat bread. Scotland has been called the “Land o’ Cakes” from the fact that an excellent cake can be made of oatmeal. The cakes are rolled thin and toasted before an open fire until they are quite hard. I have eaten oatmeal cakes in Virginia that were baked in Scotland, two or three months previously and after being heated through they were as crisp as if newly baked.

I grew up amid these surroundings and am familiar with every detail. I had my porridge twice a day all through my young life, and the development in my individual case was quite satisfactory. I often tell people that I was brought up on oatmeal and the New Testament, which is true; and I can truthfully testify to the excellency of the combination. Another important fact, especially at the present time, is that we never though of adding sugar to our oatmeal. Those ploughmen would have as soon thought of sprinkling epsom salts on their porridge as sugar. To this day nothing gives me such satisfaction at breakfast as a bowl of oatmeal and milk. To eat a bountiful supply of oatmeal and suppliment it with meat, eggs, etc., is a great mistake. It is too nurtitious and impedes digestion. In those days such terms as calorics, protein, carbohydrates were never used and need never be used when speaking of oatmeal. I ask one question: If oatmeal does tnot contain all the elements of a perfect food, how did those ploughmen stand up to their hard work and seldom complain of hunger and more seldom need the services of the doctor? It regulates the intestinal canal like clock work.

Sweet milk is absolutely necessary to complete the perfect diet. Any substitute, whether molasses, butter, or sugar, does harm. There should be a generous supply of salt in making porridge and that does away with the craving for sugar. I often meet people, doctors included, who declare that porridge ought to be cooked for six or eight hours. My only answer to that falacy is to point to my brosemen. When Oats go to the mill they are put into a kiln and subjected to considerable heat until the hull cracks and they are three-fourths cooked, then they are sifted and ground either coarse or fine as you wish. We had no flaked oats in those days, and I cannot say whether the smashing flat process is an injury or betterment to the cereal; but I prefer the coarse-ground oats, as that was what the men I refer to were fed. I am only stating facts, as I have experienced them, and I stick to my original statement that oatmeal used as the Scotish ploughmen use it is satisfactory in every particular as to giving nourishment and preserving health.

What a saving of time it makes for the housekeeker—just about half an hour for breakfast and supper, few dishes to wash, and no greasy plates to encounter. For dinner you may omit the oats and take what you prefer.

In American hotels and boarding houses, also in private homes, oatmeal is served in small quantities in small saucers as a side dish. It ought to be the =main and only= dish both morning and evening.

Oatmeal has a wonderfully beneficial effect on the morality of men. You might spend an evening, as I have many times done, in those men’s quarters, and you would not hear a profane word or an objectionable sentence from the lips of any one of them. Those men nearly all go to Church on Sunday as regularly as they go to work on Monday. They are intelligent as a rule and demonstrate by their conversation that their diet has nourished the gray matter as well as their muscles.

If oatmeal acted so beneficial fifty years ago on the inhabitants of Scotland, it surely is a good argument that it will perform its duty on Americans just as well to-day.

Personally it would be immaterial to me if the wheat and sugar crops failed entirely, so long as I could have the dear old cereal that nourished me to manhood and the good will of a fine Jersey.

While oatmeal sustains the body and keeps it in fine condition, it certainly must exercise a powerful influence upon the brain. Sir Walter Scott was an oatmeal man. In intellect he was “one of them.” Sir David Brewster, the Royal Astranomer, who could scan with more than eagle’s eye the mighty creations in the bosom of space, was made mostly of oatmeal. Hugh Miller, that huge geological hammer, inscribed with Hebrew characters, was an oatmeal man. So was “Bobby” Burns, and the man does not live who can say that “Bobby” had no brains.

No argument can be brought to bear against oatmeal. If you believe what I say is true, why not put it to the test. I know it is a great problem to change the dietitic habits of a community—and much more so to change the habits of a nation. There are Scotchmen scattered everywhere, and no doubt they and their wives would supervise Oatmeal Clubs to teach the people how to make porridge properly and to overcome any prejudice they might have as to its use. No doubt it is an acquired taste, but when once learned it is for “keeps.”

When I first came to America I did not eat any tomatoes for years. I could not endure the taste, but gradually I took to them, and now I dearly enjoy them.

Many of my friends, through solicitation and my example, have adopted the oatmeal habit, and all of them are delighted with the result and intend to make it permanent.

Just imagine what conversation of food it would be if a vast multitude enlisted under the oatmeal banner. Meatless, wheatless, and surgarless days at least six days in the week for breakfast and supper. For dinner and on Sundays I should allow every one who wished to indulge in the fruit of the hen and the ham of the hog, or whatever delicacy might suit their individual taste.

The Duke of Wellington knew his business when he held in reserve the famous Scot’s Grey cavalry at the battle of Waterloo, until the psycological moment arrived when the French lines began to waver, then ordered the charge which sent them thundering on striking the enemy like an avalanch and thereby winning the battle. So in a modest way I think the psycological moment has arrived when the people of America will listen to what I say and began to cultivate the taste for oatmeal and use it liberally, thereby conserving food for the great emergency now and which will be more acute by and by.

It was oatmeal personified in the kilted Highlanders that scaled the heights of Alma and later stormed the Russian stronghold, Sebastopol. Oatmeal rode in the light brigade at Baladava, “charging an army while all the world wonder.” Oatmeal sang Annie Laurie thirty thousand strong in the Crimean trenches in front of Sebastopol on the eve of the grand assault.

“They lay along the battery’s side Below the smoking cannon, Brave hearts, from Severn and from Clyde And from the banks of Shannon.

They sang of love and not of fame; Forgot was Britain’s glory, Each heart recalled a different name But all sang “Annie Laurie.”

Oatmeal has come out conqueror in many battles in many lands, and who can doubt that it will eventually crush to earth the hated Hohenzolerns and Hapsburgs, to say nothing of the unspeakable Turk.

=MENU.=

=Breakfast.=

Bowl of oatmeal porridge. Plenty of sweet milk. That’s All.

=Dinner.=

Please yourself. That is none of my business.

=Supper.=

Bowl of oatmeal porridge. Plenty of sweet milk. That’s All.

After supper you can go to bed and sleep like a top, and in the morning you will get up feeling tip top. J. R. G.

Tennessee Industrial School, Nashville, Tenn.

Jauary, 1918.

When Dr. Samuel Johnson, the lexicographer, vented his unaccountable spleen against the Scotch people by defining “oatmeal” as “food for English horses and Scottish men,” he exposed himself to the witty retort. “And where will you find finer horses or better men.” Thomas Carlyle tells us that on one occasion, during a visit he paid to Lord Ashburton, at the Grange, he caught sight of Macauley’s face in unwonted repose, as he was turning over the pages of a book. “I noticed,” said he, “the homely Norse features, that you find everywhere in the Western Isles, and I thought to myself; well, any one can see that you are an honest good sort of a fellow, made out of oatmeal.”

To what extent the characteristic peculiarities of nations are due to diet is a question on which we will not enter. We believe, however, that the matter of food has much to do in determining the character and destiny of a people; and oatmeal being the principal food of Scotland it would seem to be certain that the people who have been made out of it, have been in themselves very remarkable: and have exercised an influence upon the whole civilized world that is unique and singularly potential.

In introducing our subject, it would seem to be proper to say a few words about the “land o’ cakes”—that is, oat cakes. First, there is no word in any language that has in it such perfect music, or around which cling dearer and sweeter associations than the word “Caledonia.”

“Oh Caledonia stern and wild, Meet nurse for a poetic child.”

Under the spell of that name imagination takes wing, and we are back in the springtime of youth. We hear the lark singing in the clear air. We smell the fragrance of the heather. We hear the plow-boy’s whistle, and the mild-maid’s song,—some lively ditty to relieve the tedium of labor, or it may be an old heroic melody, that glimpses some grand page of Scottish story. We hear again the murmur of voices that for long years have sunk into silence. Faces rise before us that had begun to fade from our recollection, scenes in which we formed a part, pass as a panorama, and remain for ever on the deathless page of memory.

To the student of history, Scotland is not a foreign country. The genius of its sons has made it familiar and home like to every lover of pure literature, true patriotism and heroic virtue. In undertaking to speak of it, we are embarassed with our riches.

We are not so perplexed about what we shall say, as how to say it within reasonable limits. These however are but glimpses and glances of Scotland and its people, and may serve to inspire some to seek a fuller and clearer vision, and larger grasp of a theme that can never grow old while men struggle to conquer hostile forces, or strive to win a place in the van of civilization.

Scotland is the land of old romance; where ever the eye turns some scene of classic and storied interest presents itself. There, near Stirling stands that grand modern monument to William Wallace—the hero of Scotland,—the wielder of “Freedom’s sword.” A mile distant is the scene of the battle of Bannockburn where Robert Bruce achieved the deliverance of the Scottish people from the despotism of Edward 1st, and established their independence as a nation.

It is the land where mountain torrents rave down the glens, or tumble from the steep torn into foam; or that murmur softly as they steal along on the level plain under the hazel and the broom, a land whose ruggid coast lines are indented by immense fissures through which the ocean pours its tidal waves to expand into lakes in the interior—lakes which mirror the giant forms of the mountains, and higher up where lonely tarns sleep, and the nests of the sea gull and the eagle remain undisturbed in their solitude. It is a land where magic cloud scenes unfold their sudden splendors in fiery crimson and gold, or whose skies darken in fierce tempests that blot out mountain and plain in a moment in the whirling gusts and eddies of wind and rain. A land, in brief, which has many vicissitudes of climate, from the wild winter storms to the soft and gentle touches of spring—the fervid heats of summer melting into the glowing radiance of autumn sunsets unrivalled for beauty of coloring. One stroke of Scott’s magic pen pictures it thus:

“The Western waves of ebbing day Rolled o’er the glen their level way; Each purple peak, each flinty spire Was bathed in floods of living fire.”

The capital city of Scotland is Edinburgh. It is a city of marvelous contrasts in the style of its architecture. It is divided into the old and the new towns. But the first of these arrests the attention, chiefly from the quaint and curious combinations in structure which its buildings present. They are built of stone, and many of them rise ten and twelve stories, their entrances carved with figures grotesque and repulsive—griffins, dragons, monsters—half beast and half man, with hideous scowls and leers glare and grin upon you as if daring you to enter. On one of the lower streets is the “Grass Market” which was the principal place for public evecutions, and where so many of the martyrs of the Scottish covenant sealed their testimony to the truth of God’s word with their blood. This spot recalls many of the dark deeds of an age which placed an interdict upon the human mind, attempted to rule conscience by the strong arm of law, and crush human liberty under the iron heel of remorseless and ferocious oppression. Here is Holyrood palace, an ancient pile with its quadrangles, courts, turrets, winding stone stairs, and long resounding corridors. Here is the secret stair upon which, on that memorable night in Scottish history, crept Ruthren, Douglass, and their co-conspirators, who bursting into the Queen’s private apartment, seized Rizzio, the Italian singer, and in spite of his cries for mercy, and the intercession of his royal mistress, dragged him out upon the landing, and stabbed him to death with their daggers. The stain of his blood is shown on the oaken floor to this day.

A little way up the Cannon gate stands the house of John Knox, that man of iron resolution and overpowering eloquence, who alone dared to face the treacherous and unhappy Queen and wring from her eyes the tears of vain but exasperated importunity. This is he who prayed in the over pouring interest of his soul, “Lord, give me Scotland else I die,” and whose epitaph was, “Here lies one who never feared the face of man.”

Edinburg has many monuments to its Kings, Princes, and great warriars, but the monument to John Knox is not of brass or marble, but a more enduring memorial built in the deathless admiration and affection of the Scottish people. He was a man for the age in which he lived. Much however, which he did and said can not be approved in the clearer light and under the calmer judgment of this century, and by the unimpassioned standard of a juster apprehension of God’s scheme of human salvation. Still he was one of the greatest minds Scotland has produced, and his name is enrolled among the immortals.

A little to the Southeast of Edinburgh rises a lofty hill, called “Arthur’s seat.” It presents a curious phenomnon in the outlines of its summit. Looking at it from the eastern side in the purple glow of sunset, there is clearly defined in beautiful but colossal proportions the form of a couchant lion, one part of the summit to the left forming the hips, the other elevation the neck and head, the undulation between showing the soft outlines and symmetrical bend of the body. The head seems to rest on the outstretched paws and slightly turned, looks as if watching the city with sleepless vigilance. In one of the most conspicuous points of Princes street stands that splendid triumph of architectural genius dedicated to the brightest mind in literature which Scotland claims.

A man dear to every lover of ancient song and story—one who has robed the mountains, valleys and streams of Scotland with immortal glory and universal renoun—Sir Walter Scott. We have spent many a pleasant hour studying the rugged and homely face of that figue which sits in the Centre with the Scottish plait thrown over his sholder and his favorite and famous stag-hound crouching at his feet. He has given to Scotland a citizenship of literature. Scenery, monuments, houses, cottages, characters of every age and condition from the baron to the fisherman, from the lady to the smuggler and fish wife.

The witchery of the man’s genius has cast its spell over every Englid-speaking nation. In every society that cultivates the graces and refinements of polite literature, no author holds a place of higher distinction than Walter Scott.

His works are classics. With the exception of Shakespeare, no author has “held the mirror up to nature” and pictured it with such graphic nicety of detail and gracefulness of flowing outlines as this “wizard of the north.” He opens wide the doors of romance and invites us to partake with him in the rich and abundant banquet of song and story which a thousand years of history have been preparing, and which he has with prodigious labor and unwearied industry collected with his own hand and brain and disposed on the ample board with such graceful profusion. The guests he invites us to meet are for the most part real men and women—heroes whose deeds of powess eclipse in daring and self-sacrifice the classic warriors who wandered with Aeneas, and battled around the walls of ancient Troy. The martial ardor of Wallace and Rob Roy is kindled in our breasts, we catch the glow of a holy and patriatic inspiration as we stand with the heroes of the Scottish covenant at Drumclog, and see them after psalm and prayer in fierce conflict with the Royal forces under Claverhouse, and putting them to flight after one of the bloodiest battles, for the number engaged recorded in history.

Then we bewail the woeful fanaticism that turned their camp into a school of wrangling polemics, thus forestalling their ignommious and irretrievable disaster at Bothwell Bride—a defeat which Clavenhouse swore would redeem his disgrace in a tenfold measure at Drumclog. Or again we are transported into some sylvan retreat, and trip lightly among the sweet mountain harebells in the west with “The Lady of the Lake.” We watch the hunt as it dashes through the perilous defiles where the rocks in the mountain gorge seem

“As if an infant’s touch would urge Their headlong passages down the verge.”

Or the blood tingles and the eye dilates with tremulous uncertainty as to the issue of the combat between Fitz James and Roderich Dhu. There is the subtle and agile Saxon loot to foot with the larger, but not less heroic gael; and when the latter goes down blinded with blood and fury, and falls fainting on the sod leaving his antagonist breathless but unscathed, we confess our sympathy is largely with the brave but unfortunate highlander, and feel sorry that he did not succeed in giving the gay and lordly Fitz a refreshing diff with his dagger before he fainted and fell. Then the scene changes and we are with Marmion where “Day, sets on Normans castled steep, and Cheviot’s mountains lone,” we follow the gloomy spirit through its conflicts, its sorrows and its crimes, and watch the last tragic scene of his eventful history.

The battle is raging over the pain and Marmion is dragged out of it wounded, but his fiery spirit unsubdued. The priest is near him with his consolations, and better still the tender angelic ministries of a wronged but forgiving woman.

“With fruitless labor bound And strove to staunch each flowing wound The Monk with unavailing cares Exhausted all the Church’s prayers, Ever he saw that close and near A lady’s voice, was in his ear, And that the priest he could not hear For that she ever sang: In the lost battle bourne down by the flying When mingles war’s rattle with the groans of the dying So the notes ring The war that for a space did fail Now trebly thundering swelled the gale And Stanley was the cry Alight on Marmion’s vision spread And fixed his glassy eye With dying hand above his head He shook the fragment of his blade And shouted victory! Charge, Chester charge, on Stanley on! Were the last words of Marmion.”

He had the rare facutly of compressing a whole life’s romance in a few stanzas, as in “Lochinvar.”