FullReads

At that period it seemed to me and to the Thompson boy, who was moved to speak feelingly on the subject, and in fact to all of us, that excessive slimness might have its drawbacks. Since that time several of us have had occasion to change our minds. With the passage of years we have fleshened up, and now we know better. The last time I saw the Thompson boy he was known as Excess-Baggage Thompson. His figure in profile suggested a man carrying a roll-top desk in his arms and his face looked like a face that had refused to jell and was about to run down on his clothes. He spoke longingly of the days of his youth and wondered if the shape of his knees had changed much since the last time he saw them.

Yes sir, no matter what Doctor Hutchinson says, I contend that the slim man has all the best of it in this world. The fat man is the universal goat; he is humanity’s standing joke. Stomachs are the curse of our modern civilization. When a man gets a stomach his troubles begin. If you doubt this ask any fat man–I started to say ask any fat woman, too. Only there aren’t any fat women to speak of. There are women who are plump and will admit it; there are even women who are inclined to be stout. But outside of dime museums there are no fat women. But there are plenty of fat men. Ask one of them. Ask any one of them. Ask me.

This thing of acquiring a tummy steals on one insidiously, like a thief in the night. You notice that you are plumping out a trifle and for the time being you feel a sort of small personal satisfaction in it. Your shirts fit you better. You love the slight strain upon the buttonholes. You admire the pleasant plunking sound suggestive of ripe watermelons when you pat yourself. Then a day comes when the persuasive odor of mothballs fills the autumnal air and everybody at the barber shop is having the back of his neck shaved also, thus betokening awakened social activities, and when evening is at hand you take the dress-suit, which fitted you so well, out of the closet where it has been hanging and undertake to back yourself into it. You are pained to learn that it is about three sizes too small. At first you are inclined to blame the suit for shrinking, but second thought convinces you that the fault lies elsewhere. It is you that have swollen, not the suit that has shrunk. The buttons that should adorn the front of the coat are now plainly visible from the rear.

You buy another dress-suit and next fall you have out-grown that one too. You pant like a lizard when you run to catch a car. You cross your legs and have to hold the crossed one on with both hands to keep your stomach from shoving it off in space. After a while you quit crossing them and are content with dawdling yourself on your own lap. You are fat! Dog-gone it–you are fat!

You are up against it and it is up against you, which is worse. You are something for people to laugh at. You are also expected to laugh. It is all right for a thin man to be grouchy; people will say the poor creature has dyspepsia and should be humored along. But a fat man with a grouch is inexcusable in any company–there is so much of him to be grouchy. He constitutes a wave of discontent and a period of general depression. He is not expected to be romantic and sentimental either. It is all right for a giraffe to be sentimental, but not a hippopotamus. If you doubt me consult any set of natural history pictures. The giraffe is shown with his long and sinuous neck entwined in fond embrace about the neck of his mate; but the amphibious, blood-sweating hippo is depicted as spouting and wallowing, morose and misanthropic, in a mud puddle off by himself. In passing I may say that I regard this comparison as a particularly apt one, because I know of no living creature so truly amphibious in hot weather as an open-pored fat man, unless it is a hippopotamus.