However, in those exciting days there were many little moving distractions about to keep one from brooding o’ermuch on thoughts of lacking provender.  I boast not, but merely utter a verity, when I state that every time I shook myself I shifted the center of population.  Where we had been the lesser wild life of midcontinental Europe abounded.  In the matter of a distinction which had come to me utterly without solicitation or effort on my part I have no desire to brag, but in justice to myself—­and my boarders—­I must add that at that moment, of all the human beings in Central Europe, I was the most densely inhabited.  My companions scratched along, doing fairly well, too; but I led the field—­I was so much roomier than any one of them was.

But here aboard this Pullman on this, the dedicatory day of my self-imposed martyrdom, I could not lose myself as I had on that former historic occasion in the ardor of chasing the small game of the country.  By four o’clock in the afternoon I could appreciate the sensations of a conch shell on a parlor whatnot.  I had a feeling that if anyone were to press his ear up against me he would hear a murmuring sound as of distant sea waves.  Yet, mark you, I held bravely out, fighting still the good fight.  This, then, was my dinner, if such it might in truth be called:  Clear soup, a smallish slice of rare roast beef cut shaving thin, gluten bread sparsely buttered, a cloud of watercress no larger than a man’s hand, another raw apple and a bit of domestic cheese—­nothing rich, nothing exotic, no melting French fromages, no creamy Danish pastries.

Only when I reached my demi-tasse, which I took straight, did I permit myself a touch of luxury.  I lit my cigar with a genuine imported Swedish parlor match.

Followed then the first comforting manifestation, the first gratefully registered taste of recompense for my privations.  I had to speak that night and in a large hall, too, and I found my voice to be clearer and stronger than usual, and found, also, that I spoke with much less effort than usual.  I was sure partial fasting during the day was bearing fruits in the evening, and I was right, as subsequent evening experiences proved to me.  I had rather dreaded that hunger gripes would make my night a sleepless one, but it didn’t happen.  I may have dreamed longing dreams about victuals, but I tore off eight solid hours of unbridled and—­I dare say—­uproarious rest.

CHAPTER X

Wherein Our Hero Falters

Next day I kept it up, varying the first day’s menus slightly, but keeping the bulk consumption down, roughly, to about one-half or possibly one-third what my rations formerly had been.  Before night of the second day that all-gone sensation had vanished.  Already I had made the agreeable discovery that I could get along and be reasonably happy on from 35 to 50 per cent of what until then I had deludedly