Baltimore Evening Sun (31 October 1911): 6.

Only 1,299 days more! Well, well, let us try to be happy!

Contributions to the new lexicon of American synonyms for married:

Poisoned, Mellowed, Peonized, Civilized, Harnessed, Marooned.

The New Thoughters of the United States, of whom ther are said to be 2,000,000, are all het up by the news that the distinguished Fra Orison Swett Marden, B. S., B. O., A. M., LL.B., M. D., author of “The Miracle of Right Thought,” “Every Man a King” and other powerful psychological works, has joined the staff of the Nautilus, the official New Thought organ, of which Mother Elizabeth Towne, the revered superintendent of all New Thoughters, is editor-in-chief.

This acquisition gives the Nautilus a practical monopoly of New Thought brains. Edwin Markham, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, William Walker Atkinson, Prof. Edgar L. Larkin and all other recognized prophets nad soothsayers were already in line—all, that is, save Dr. Marden. Why he held out so long I can’t tell you. Many a roaring psychic current must have been bearing him Nautilusward all the while. No doubt the pull of Mind finally became too strong for him. At all events, he is now “added to the Nautilus staff of contributors,” vice Prof. Wallace D. Wattles, author of “The Science of Being Well,” who died of hookworm last spring. The hookworm either has or hasn’t a sense of humor.

The exitus of professor Wattles was a sad blow to the New Thought, for he was a cardinal bishop in the Sacred College and an ardent missionary. His books sold by the thousand, particularly “The Science of Being Well,” which was bitter reading for the fools who trust to doctors. PRofessor Wattles proved in it that any man who honestly concentrated his mind upon the business could keep well forever. It was all, he demonstrated, a matter of Mind. Mind bossed the liver and the solar plexus, the phagocytes and the streptococci. Alas for Professor Wattles, he overlooked a great exception, a lone rebel! Mind did not boss the hookworm. And so the hookworm gobbled the Professor, and New Thoughters were given pause.

But “The Scince of Being Well” is still orthodox gospel, and Mother Elizabeth still offers it at $1 a copy, postpaid. The other works of Professor Wattle, “The Science of Getting Rich” and “The Science of Being Great,” are to be had at the same modest price. The former is “pragmatic and practical, not philosophical. * * * It explains principles which the author tested and proved out in his own life. It tells you just how to use your mind for success in money making.” Here, at least, the Professor’s magic succeeded. He made money alive, and now that he has passed into the great silence, his book continues to earn money for his heirs and assigns.

But on the physical side, as I have said, Professor Wattles failed, and many other New Thoughters seem to be failing with him, for the current issue of the Nautilus is heavy with the advertisements of persons who offer to cure this or that ill. A great many New Thoughters, it appears, run to large girths. No less than six advertisers announce that they have sure cures for this annoying condition. Professor McDonald, of McKeesport, Pa., a pupil of the eminent Professor Bernarr Macfadden, says that his fat patients, taken together, have lost 8,450 pounds so far. Prof. Susanna Cocroft, of Chicago, has accomplised even greater wonders. “I have reduced about 25,000 women,” she says, “from 10 to 85 pounds.” Fixing the average at 25 pounds—a very modest estimate—this works out to 625,000 pounds in all, or aboot 30 tons. What a Matterhorn of double chins!

The other New Thought foss of bulk do not present such massive figures. Prof. Marjorie Hamilton, of Denver, contents herself with the simple promise “to permanently reduce your weight any amount—up to 70 pounds.” The Professor herself lost 37 pounds by her own treatment and “now clumbs to the summit of Pike’s Peak with ease”—a feat utterly impossible to any woman of ovoid figure. And the miracle was achieved “without drugs, medicine, harmful exercise or starvation diet.” All this Professor Marjorie offers to “swear under oath,” an extremely earnest and convincing form of swearing.

To set off the bulging New Thoughters there are others, it appears, who resemble lemonade straws. For these, too, the New Thought, by its regularily ordained pathologists, has cures. The same Professor McDonald who precipitated 8,450 pounds of adipose tissue from his fat patients, has added no less than 15,730 pounds to his thin patients. Fat or thin, he will cure you. Prof. James R. Allison, on the contrary, confines himself to fattening the thin. He sells a potent substance called Kada Yaga, which is composed of “the active, tonic essences extracted from special food principles.” A teaspoonful of it, three times a day. will make the scrawniest person exquisitely rotund. A gentleman named A. J. Mason, address unknown, gained 40 pounds. Alfred Tichbury gained 48½.. James Flanagan gained 25. Miss Minnie Hughes gained 16.

But enough of such stuff. Obesity and emaciation, after all, are but two diseases—and the New Thought has cures for thousands of others. Prof. G. H. Brinkler, for example, cures psoriasis, deafness, rheumatism, eczema, catarrh, congested liver and fevers, and all by dieting and without either drugs or exerciuses. “All scientists,” says Professor Brinkler, “agree that death is caused by the clogging and stiffening of the arteries, thus preventing circulation.” But what causes that clogging and stiffening? Minerals and cereals. “These foods cause the short lives of sheep, cattle and horses.”

But how about the elephant? He eats the same food eaten by sheep, cattle and horses, and yet he lives two or three times as long. Why? Because, says Professor Brinkler, he has “greater muscular strength.” But how, eating the same food, does he get it? Alas, the Professor does not answer in his current advertisement! Let us wait patiently for the next number of the Nautilus and see if he tells us there.