Boil it six weeks, and it comes out unchanged.

Boil it six years, or six centuries, and the result would be the same.

You can not stew a grindstone or bring granite to porridge, and the wheat-husk is equally obstinate.

So long as enthusiasts ate husk and kernel ground together, little harm was done.

But when a more progressive soul declared that in bran alone the true nutriment lay, and a host of would-be healthier people proceeded to eat bran and preach bran, there came a time when eating and preaching both stopped, from sheer want of strength to go on.