nd 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