to be romantic and sentimental either. It is all right for a giraffe
to be sentimental, but not a hippopotamus. If you doubt me consult
any set of natural history pictures. The giraffe is shown with
his long and sinuous neck entwined in fond embrace about the neck
of his mate; but the amphibious, blood-sweating hippo is depicted
as spouting and wallowing, morose and misanthropic, in a mud puddle
off by himself. In passing I may say that I regard this comparison
as a particularly apt one, because I know of no living creature so
truly amphibious in hot weather as an open-pored fat man, unless
it is a hippopotamus.

Oh how true is the saying that nobody loves a fat man! When fat
comes up on the front porch love jumps out of the third-story window.
Love in a cottage? Yes. Love in a rendering plant? No. A fat
man's heart is supposed to lie so far inland that the softer emotions
cannot reach it at all. Yet the fattest are the truest, if you did
but know it, and also they are the tenderest and a man with a double
chin rarely leads a double life. For one thing, it requires too
much moving round.

A fat man cannot wear the clothes he would like to wear. As a race
fat men are fond of bright and cheerful colors; but no fat man can
indulge his innocent desires in this direction without grieving his
family and friends and exciting the derisive laughter of the
unthinking. If he puts on a fancy-flowered vest, they'll say he
looks like a Hanging Garden of Babylon. And yet he has a figure
just made for showing off a fancy-flowered vest to best effect.
He may favor something in light checks for his spring suit; but
if he ventures abroad in a checked suit, ribald strangers will look
at him meaningly and remark to one another that the center of