Note 485 — Chapter XXIX · Ruef’s Last Refuge Fails.

The following is a fair sample of the articles descriptive of Ruef’s suffering in prison, which have been inflicted upon the California public ever since Ruef donned stripes; it appeared in The San Francisco Bulletin of December 21, 1912: “Ruef is an epicure. As discordant sounds do violence to the feelings of a musician gifted with an exquisite ear, so coarse, badly cooked or tasteless food does violence to the epicure who is gifted with exquisite nerves for inhaling, tasting and appreciating delicate flavors. The gastric juices of the epicure cannot become freely active on mere hunger as with men not so endowed. Digestion with the epicure must wait upon the fine dictates of the palate; and a stomach so guarded cannot wantonly change to an extreme opposite without material suffering. To eat merely to be filled, to overeat, to eat hurriedly, is for the epicure, as one epicure puts it, ‘to commit moral sins.’ Ruef since his imprisonment has been compelled to do all these things.”