, or among friends by the
affectionate diminutive of Liv for short.

This I would regard as a typical instance of the value of a chain of good
circumstantial evidence, with no essential link lacking. Direct testimony
could hardly have been more satisfactory, all things considered; and yet
direct testimony is the best sort there is, in the law courts and out. On
the other hand, hearsay evidence is viewed legally and often by the layman
with suspicion; in most causes of action being barred out altogether.
Nevertheless, it is a phase of the fattish man's perversity that,
rejecting the direct, the circumstantial and the circumferential testimony
which abounds about him, he too often awaits confirmation of his growing
suspicions at the hands of outsiders and bystanders before he is willing
openly to admit that condition of fatness which for long has been patent
to the most casual observer.

Women, as I have observed them, are even more disposed to avoid confession
on this point. A woman somehow figures that so long as she refuses to
acknowledge to herself or any other interested party that she has
progressed out of the ranks of the plumpened into the congested and
overflowing realms of the avowedly obese, why, for just so long may she
keep the rest of the world in ignorance too. I take it, the ostrich which
first set the example to all the other ostriches of trying to avoid
detection by the enemy through the simple expedient of sticking its head
in the sand was a lady ostrich, and moreover one typical of her sex. But
men are bad enough. I know that I was.

CHAPTER IV

_I Become The Panting Champion_

Month after month, through the cycle of the revolving seasons, I went
along deceiving myself, even though I deceived none else, coining new
pleas in extenuation or outright contradictions to meet each new-arising
element of confirmatory proof to a state of case which no unprejudiced
person could fail to acknowledge. The original discoverer of the alibi was
a fat man; indeed, it was named for him--Ali Bi-Ben Adhem, he was, a
friend and companion of the Prophet, and so large that, going into Mecca,
he had to ride on two camels. This fact is historically authenticated. I
looked it up.

In the fall of the year, when I brought last winter's heavy suit out of
the clothes-press and found it now to hug o'ersnugly for comfort, I
cajoled my saner self into accepting a most transparent lie--my figure had
not materially alter