Fatty, and they didn't make any special
secret of it when he was around. He was a mighty brave boy and a mighty
strong boy and a mighty proud boy--with his mouth; but he always managed
to slip out of anything that looked like a fight by having a sore hand
or a case of the mumps. The truth of the matter was that he was afraid
of everything except food, and that was the thing which was hurting him
most. It's mighty seldom that a fellow's afraid of what he ought to be
afraid of in this world.

Of course, like most cowards, while Fatty always had an excuse for not
doing something that might hurt his skin, he would take a dare to do
anything that would hurt his self-respect, for fear the boys would laugh
at him, or say that he was afraid, if he refused. So one day during
recess Jim Hicks dared him to eat a piece of dirt. Fatty hesitated a
little, because, while he was pretty promiscuous about what he put into
his stomach, he had never included dirt in his bill-of-fare. But when
the boys began to say that he was afraid, Fatty up and swallowed it.

And when he dared the other boys to do the same thing and none of them
would take the dare, it made him mighty proud and puffed up. Got to
charging the bigger boys and the lounger around the post-office a cent
to see him eat a piece of dirt the size of a hickory-nut. Found there
was good money in that, and added grasshoppers, at two cents apiece, as
a side line. Found them so popular that he took on chinch bugs at a
nickel, and fairly coined money. The last I heard of Fatty he was in a
Dime Museum, drawing two salaries--one as "The Fat Man," and the other
as "Launcelot, The Locust Eater, the Only Man Alive with a Gizzard."

You are going to meet a heap of Fatties, first and last, fellows who'll
eat a little dirt "for fun" or to show off, and who'll eat a little more
because they find that there's some easy money or times in it. It's hard
to get at these men, because when they've lost everything they had to be
proud of, they still keep their pride. You can always bet that when a
fellow's pride makes him touchy, it's because there are some mighty raw
spots on it.

It's been my experience that pride is usually a spur to the strong and a
drag on the weak. It drives the strong man along and holds the weak one
back. It makes the fellow with the stiff upper lip and the square jaw
smile at a laugh and laugh at a sneer; it keeps his conscience straight
and his back humped over his work; i