population appears to be shifting again. It has been my
observation that fat men are instinctively drawn to short tan
overcoats for the early fall. But a fat man in a short tan
overcoat, strolling up the avenue of a sunny afternoon, will be
constantly overhearing persons behind him wondering why they didn't
wait until night to move the bank vault. That irks him sore; but
if he turns round to reproach them he is liable to shove an old
lady or a poor blind man off the sidewalk, and then, like as not,
some gamin will sing out: "Hully gee, Chimmy, wot's become of the
rest of the parade? "Ere's the bass drum goin' home all by itself."

I've known of just such remarks being made and I assure you they
cut a sensitive soul to the core. Not for the fat man are the
snappy clothes for varsity men and the patterns called by the
tailors confined because that is what they should be but aren't.
Not for him the silken shirt with the broad stripes. Shirts with
stripes that were meant to run vertically but are caused to run
horizontally, by reasons over which the wearer has no control,
remind others of the awning over an Italian grocery. So the fat
man must stick to sober navy blues and depressing blacks and
melancholy grays. He is advised that he should wear his evening
clothes whenever possible, because black and white lines are more
becoming to him. But even in evening clothes, that wide expanse
of glazed shirt and those white enamel studs will put the onlookers
in mind of the front end of a dairy lunch or so I have been cruelly
told.

When planning public utilities, who thinks of a fat man? There
never was a hansom cab made that would hold a fat man comfortably
unless he left the doors open, and that makes him feel undressed.