e proportions and I would start the job
right away. It did not occur to me that cutting down my daily consumption
of provender might prove helpful to the success of the proposed
undertaking. Or if it did occur to me I put the idea sternly from me, for
I was by way of being a robust trencherman. I had joyed in the pleasures
of the table, and I had written copiously of those joys, and I now
declined to recant of my faith or to abate my indulgences.

All this talk which I had heard about balanced rations went in at one ear
and out at the other. I knew what a balanced ration was. I stowed one
aboard three times daily--at morn, again at noon and once more at
nightfall. A balanced ration was one which, being eaten, did not pull you
over on your face; one which you could poise properly if only you leaned
well back, upon arising from the table, and placed the two hands, with a
gentle lifting motion, just under the overhang of the main cargo hold.

Surely there must be some way of achieving the desired result other than
by following dieting devices. There was--exercising was the answer. I
would exercise and so become a veritable faun.

Now, so far as I recalled, I had never taken any indoor exercise excepting
once in a while to knock on wood. I abhorred the thought of ritualistic
bedroom calisthenics such as were recommended by divers health experts.
Climbing out of a warm bed and standing out in the middle of a cold room
and giving an imitation of a demoniac semaphore had never appealed to me
as a fascinating divertisement for a grown man. As I think I may have
remarked once before, lying at full length on one's back on the floor
immediately upon awakening of a morning and raising the legs to full
length twenty times struck me as a performance lacking in dignity and
utterly futile.

Besides, what sort of a way was that to greet the dewy morn?

So as an alternative I decided to enroll for membership at a gymnasium
where I could have company at my exercising and make a sport of what
otherwise would be in the nature of a punishment. This I did. With a group
of fellow inmates for my team mates, I tossed the medicine ball about. My
score at this was perfect; that is to say, sometimes when it came my turn
to catch I missed the ball, but the ball never once missed me. Always it
landed on some tender portion of my anatomy, so that my average, written
in black-and-blue spots, remained an even 1000.

Daily I cantered around and arou