h is a very expressive word and one that I
would freely recommend to others who may be situated as I was.

At that moment, of all the places in the world that I could think
of--and I could think of a great many because the events of my past
life were rapidly flashing past me--as is customary, I am told, in other
cases of grave peril, such as drowning--I say of all the places in the
world there were just two where I least desired to be--one was up on top
of that horse and the other was down under him. But it seemed to be a
choice of the two evils, and so I chose the lesser and got under him. I
did this by a simple expedient that occurred to me at the moment. I fell
off. I was tramped on considerably, and the earth proved to be harder
than it looked when viewed from an approximate height of sixteen miles
up, but I lived and breathed--or at least I breathed after a time
had elapsed--and I was satisfied. And so, having gone through this
experience myself, I am in position to appreciate what any other man
of my general build is going through as I see him bobbing by--the poor
martyr, sacrificing himself as a burnt offering, or anyway a blistered
one--on the high altar of a Gothic ruin of a horse. And, besides, I
know that riding a horse doesn't reduce a fat man. It merely reduces the
horse.

So it goes--the fat man is always up against it. His figure is
half-masted in regretful memory of the proportions he had once, and
he is made to mourn. Most sports and many gainful pursuits are closed
against him. He cannot play lawn tennis, or, at least according to my
observation, he cannot play lawn tennis oftener than once in two weeks.
In between games he limps round, stiff as a hat tree and sore as a
mashed thumb. Time was when he might mingle in the mystic mazes of the
waltz, tripping the light fantastic toe or stubbing it, as the case may
be. But that was in the days of the old-fashioned square dance, which
was the fat man's friend among dances, and also of the old-fashioned
two-step, and not in these times when dancing is a cross between a
wrestling match, a contortion act and a trip on a roller-coaster, and is
either named for an animal, like the Bunny Hug and the Tarantula Glide,
or for a town, like the Mobile Mop-Up, and the Far Rockaway Rock and the
South Bend Bend. His friends would interfere--or the authorities would.
He can go in swimming, it is true; but if he turns over and floats,
people yell out that somebody has set