ed
to me. I had rather dreaded that hunger gripes would make my night a
sleepless one, but it didn't happen. I may have dreamed longing dreams
about victuals, but I tore off eight solid hours of unbridled and--I dare
say--uproarious rest.

CHAPTER X

_Wherein Our Hero Falters_

Next day I kept it up, varying the first day's menus slightly, but keeping
the bulk consumption down, roughly, to about one-half or possibly
one-third what my rations formerly had been. Before night of the second
day that all-gone sensation had vanished. Already I had made the agreeable
discovery that I could get along and be reasonably happy on from 35 to 50
per cent of what until then I had deludedly thought was required to
nourish me. Before the week ended I felt fitter and sprier in every way
than I had for years past; more alive, more interested in things, quicker
on my feet and brisker in my mental processes than in a long time. The
chronic logy, foggy feeling in my head disappeared and failed to return.
I may add that to date it still has not returned. Relieved of pressure
against its valves--at least I assume that was what came to pass--my heart
began functioning as I assume a normal heart should function, and at once
the sense of oppression in the neighborhood of the heart was gone.

Within the same week I took most joyful note of the fact that I was losing
flesh in the vicinities where mainly I craved to lose it amidships and at
the throat. I still had a double chin in front, but the third one, which I
carried behind as a spare--the one which ran all the way round my neck and
lapped at the back like a clergyman's collar--was melting away. And unless
I was woefully mistaken, I no longer had to fight so desperate a battle
with the waistband of my trousers when I dressed in the mornings.

I was not mistaken. Glory be and likewise selah! My first and second
mezzanines were visibly shrinking. By these signs and portents was I
stimulated to continue the campaign so auspiciously launched and so
satisfactorily progressing.

I shall not deny that in the second week I did some backsliding. The swing
of the tour carried me into the South. It was the South in the splendor of
the young springtime when the cardinal bird sang his mating song. With
brocading dandelions each pasture gloriously became even as the Field of
the Cloth of Gold; and lo, the beginning of the strawberry shortcake
season overlapped the last of the smoked-hog-jowl-a