There never was an orchestra seat in a theater that would contain
all of him at the same time--he churns up and sloshes out over the
sides. Apartment houses and elevators and hotel towels are all
constructed upon the idea that the world is populated by stock-size
people with those double-A-last shapes.

Take a Pullman car, for instance. One of the saddest sights known
is that of a fat man trying to undress on one of those closet shelves
called upper berths without getting hopelessly entangled in the
hammock or committing suicide by hanging himself with his own
suspenders. And after that, the next most distressing sight is
the same fat man after he has undressed and is lying there, spouting
like a sperm-whale and overflowing his reservation like a crock of
salt-rising dough in a warm kitchen, and wondering how he can turn
over without bulging the side of the car and maybe causing a wreck.
Ah me, those dark green curtains with the overcoat buttons on them
hide many a distressful spectacle from the traveling public!

If a fat man undertakes to reduce nobody sympathizes with him. A
thin man trying to fatten up so he won't fall all the way through
his trousers when he draws 'em on in the morning is an object of
sympathy and of admiration, and people come from miles round and
give him advice about how to do it. But suppose a fat man wants
to train down to a point where, when he goes into a telephone
booth and says "Ninety-four Broad," the spectators will know he
is trying to get a number and not telling his tailor what his
waist measure is.

Is he greeted with sympathetic understanding? He is not. He is
greeted with derision and people stand round and gloat at him. The