point to study the proportions and hearken to the disclosures
of such a one, and if he carried his stomach in a hanging-garden effect,
with terraces rippling down and flying buttresses and all; and if he had a
pasty, unhealthy complexion or an apoplectic tint to his skin I said to
myself that thenceforth I should apply the reverse English to his favorite
matutinal prescription.

CHAPTER IX

_Adventure of The Fallen Egg_

So, having mapped out my campaign of attack against my fat, I rose one
morning from my berth in the sleeping car and I dressed; and firmly
clutching my new-formed resolution to prevent its escape, I made my way to
the dining car and sat down and gave my order to the affable honor
graduate of Tuskegee Institute who graciously deigned to wait on me.

Now, theretofore, for so far back as I remembered, breakfast had been my
heartiest meal of the entire day, with perhaps two exceptions--luncheon
and dinner. Precedent inclined me toward ordering about as many pieces of
sliced banana as would be required to button a fairly tall woman's
princess frock all the way down her back, with plenty of sugar and cream,
and likewise a large porringer of some standard glutinous cereal, to be
followed by sausages with buckwheat cakes and a few odd kickshaws and
comfits in the way of strawberry preserves and hot buttered toast and
coffee that was half cream, and first one thing and then another. But
Spartanlike I put temptation sternly behind me and told the officiating
collegian to bring me plain boiled prunes, coffee with hot milk and
saccharin tablets, dry toast and one dropped egg.

The prunes and the coffee were according to specifications, although,
lacking the customary cream and three lumps of sugar, the coffee was in
the nature of a profound disappointment. But a superficial inquiry
convinced me that the egg was not properly a dropped egg at all.

Here was a fallen egg, if I ever saw one. I was filled with pity for
it--poor, forsaken, abandoned thing, with none to speak a kind word for
it! And probably more sinned against than sinning, too. Perhaps there was
hereditary influences to be reckoned with. Perhaps its producer had been
incubator raised, with no mother to guide her and only the Standard Oil
Company for a foster parent. And what would a New Jersey corporation know
about raising a hen?

Thus in sudden compassion I mused. To the waiter, though, I said:

"There has been a mistake here, alumnus