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If a fat man undertakes to reduce nobody sympathizes with him. A thin man trying to fatten up so he won’t fall all the way through his trousers when he draws ’em on in the morning is an object of sympathy and of admiration, and people come from miles round and give him advice about how to do it. But suppose a fat man wants to train down to a point where, when he goes into a telephone booth and says “Ninety-four Broad,” the spectators will know he is trying to get a number and not telling his tailor what his waist measure is.

Is he greeted with sympathetic understanding? He is not. He is greeted with derision and people stand round and gloat at him. The authorities recommend health exercises, but health exercises are almost invariably undignified in effect and wearing besides. Who wants to greet the dewy morn by lying flat on his back and lifting his feet fifty times? What kind of a way is that to greet the dewy morn anyhow? And bending over with the knees stiff and touching the tips of the toes with the tips of the fingers–that’s no employment for a grown man with a family to support and a position to maintain in society. Besides which it cannot be done. I make the statement unequivocally and without fear of successful contradiction that it cannot be done. And if it could be done–which as I say it can’t–there would be no real pleasure in touching a set of toes that one has known of only by common rumor for years. Those toes are the same as strangers to you–you knew they were in the neighborhood, of course, but you haven’t been intimate with them.

Maybe you try dieting, which is contrary to nature. Nature intended that a fat man should eat heartily, else why should she endow him with the capacity and the accommodations. Starving in the midst of plenty is not for him who has plenty of midst. Nature meant that a fat man should have an appetite and that he should gratify it at regular intervals–meant that he should feel like the Grand Canyon before dinner and like the Royal Gorge afterward. Anyhow, dieting for a fat man consists in not eating anything that’s fit to eat. The specialist merely tells him to eat what a horse would eat and has the nerve to charge him for what he could have found out for himself at any livery stable. Of course he might bant in the same way that a woman bants. You know how a woman bants. She begins the day very resolutely, and if you are her husband you want to avoid irritating her or upsetting her, because hell hath no fury like a woman banting. For breakfast she takes a swallow of lukewarm water and half of a soda cracker. For luncheon she takes the other half of the cracker and leaves off the water. For dinner she orders everything on the menu except the date and the name of the proprietor. She does this in order to give her strength to go on with the treatment.

No fat man would diet that way; but no matter which way he does diet it doesn’t do him any good. Health exercises only make him muscle-sore and bring on what the Harvard ball team call the Charles W. Horse; while banting results in attacks of those kindred complaints–the Mollie K. Grubbs and the Fan J. Todds.

Walking is sometimes recommended and the example of the camel is pointed out, the camel being a creature that can walk for days and days. But, as has been said by some thinking person, who in thunder wants to be a camel? The subject of horseback riding is also brought up frequently in this connection. It is one of the commonest delusions among fat men that horseback riding will bring them down and make them sylphlike and willowy. I have several fat men among my lists of acquaintances who labor under this fallacy. None of them was ever a natural-born horseback rider; none of them ever will be. I like to go out of a bright morning and take a comfortable seat on a park bench–one park bench is plenty roomy enough if nobody else is using it–and sit there and watch these unhappy persons passing single file along the bridle-path. I sit there and gloat until by rights I ought to be required to take out a gloater’s license.