and for the time being you feel a sort of small personal satisfaction
in it. Your shirts fit you better. You love the slight strain
upon the buttonholes. You admire the pleasant plunking sound
suggestive of ripe watermelons when you pat yourself. Then a day
comes when the persuasive odor of mothballs fills the autumnal air
and everybody at the barber shop is having the back of his neck
shaved also, thus betokening awakened social activities, and when
evening is at hand you take the dress-suit, which fitted you so
well, out of the closet where it has been hanging and undertake to
back yourself into it. You are pained to learn that it is about
three sizes too small. At first you are inclined to blame the suit
for shrinking, but second thought convinces you that the fault lies
elsewhere. It is you that have swollen, not the suit that has
shrunk. The buttons that should adorn the front of the coat are
now plainly visible from the rear.

You buy another dress-suit and next fall you have out-grown that
one too. You pant like a lizard when you run to catch a car. You
cross your legs and have to hold the crossed one on with both hands
to keep your stomach from shoving it off in space. After a while
you quit crossing them and are content with dawdling yourself on your
own lap. You are fat! Dog-gone it--you are fat!

You are up against it and it is up against you, which is worse. You
are something for people to laugh at. You are also expected to
laugh. It is all right for a thin man to be grouchy; people will
say the poor creature has dyspepsia and should be humored along.
But a fat man with a grouch is inexcusable in any company--there
is so much of him to be grouchy. He constitutes a wave of
discontent and a period of general depression. He is not expected