[Illustration: OH, THANK YOU! THAT IS BETTER.]
“Oh, thank you! That is better,” sighed the garbage can. “What a relief!”
“Shall I get a doctor?” asked Robert anxiously.
“Oh, no, thank you; I don’t need a doctor now. I feel almost like myself again,” he answered.
“If folks only wouldn’t fill me so full of rich good food,” he complained, “how much better off everybody would be!”
“Too full of rich good food!” laughed Robert. “Why, I never knew that any rich good food was thrown away.”
“We get entirely too much of it,” said the garbage can. “Waste food is the only kind that is good for garbage cans.”
“Do many people waste good food?” asked Robert.
“What some folks throw away makes me sick!” declared the garbage can confidentially. “I could tell you some things, young man, that would certainly surprise you.”
“Please tell me, if you feel able,” begged Robert.
“Very well,” agreed the garbage can, settling down comfortably. Anyone could see that he was pleased.
“In the first place,” he began, “do you know that we American garbage cans are the hardest worked of all garbage cans in the world?”
“It’s a fact, though,” went on the garbage can. “The American garbage can is the fattest in the world,--a United States senator first said so.”
“Why, what did that mean?” asked Robert. “American garbage cans don’t look any fatter than those in other countries, do they?”
“The senator referred to the rich food that is thrown into the American garbage can,” explained the speaker patiently. “He meant that the American people are the most wasteful people in the world. They do not save little things. Few people stop to think how long it takes grains of wheat to grow into a loaf of bread. Did you ever think how hard somebody had to work to get the wheat grains ready to make the bread?”
“No,” acknowledged Robert, “I don’t believe I ever did.”
“If people did think, we should not be stuffed every day with bread enough to feed many a poor family.”
“Oh, not that much, surely?” questioned Robert in surprise.
“Yes, sir,” declared the garbage can, “that much. I ought to know! I have been a garbage can all my life.”
“Not only bread,” went on the garbage can, “but meat, too. Now, that does surprise you, doesn’t it! It takes four years to grow a beefsteak, yet there are garbage cans which are fed nice big pieces of beefsteak every day or so.”