hundred and twenty-five pounds. I went to the canned-exercise, the
physical-torture professor, the diet, the salts, and all the rest of
it, taking off a few pounds but putting it all back again--and more--as
soon as I stopped.

These attempts numbered about two a year. Between times I ate as I
wanted to and drank as I pleased. Things ran along until the first of
January, 1911. I knew I was getting fatter, for my tailor told me so
and my belts and old clothes all proved it. Still, I didn't bother
much. I thought I was lingering round about two hundred and
thirty-five--too much, of course; but I got away with it pretty well,
except in hot weather and when I went up in the high mountains, and I
was reasonably content. I was fat, all right. My waist was only two
inches smaller than my chest and that meant my waist was forty-four
inches in girth. As a matter of fact, being scant five feet ten and a
half, I was bigger than a house; but I deluded myself with that stuff
about my broad shoulders and my deep chest, and thought it didn't show.
It did show, of course. I was a fat man--a big fat man--carrying forty
pounds or more of excess weight.

I had dieted and quit; exercised and quit; gone on the waterwagon and
fallen off; had fussed round a good deal, spending a lot of money in
the attempt, and I was getting fatter all the time. I hated to admit
that fact. I tried to fool myself into the conviction that I wasn't
getting any larger--and all the time I knew I was. I even went so far
as to stop getting on the scales; and when anybody--as almost everybody
did--said, "Why, you're getting bigger, ain't you?" I always replied:
"No, I think not. I stick along about two hundred and thirty-five
pounds."