You are in despair about being anything but fat, and--! how you hate it.
But cheer up. I will save you; yea, even as I have saved myself and
many, many others, so will I save you.

[Sidenote: _Spirituality vs. Materiality_]

[Sidenote: _A Long, Long Battle_]

It is not in vain that all my life I have had to fight the too, too
solid. Why, I can remember when I was a child I was always being
consoled by being told that I would outgrow it, and that when I matured
I would have some shape. Never can I tell pathetically "when I was
married I weighed only one hundred eighteen, and look at me now." No, I
was a delicate slip of one hundred and sixty-five when I was taken.

I never will tell you how much I have weighed, I am so thoroughly
ashamed of it, but my normal weight is one hundred and fifty pounds, and
at one time there was seventy pounds more of me than there is now, or
has been since I knew how to control it. I was not so shameless as that
very long, and as I look back upon that short period I feel like
refunding the comfortable salary received as superintendent of an
hospital; for I know I was only sixty-five per cent efficient, for
efficiency decreases in direct proportion as excess weight increases.
Everybody knows it.


_The Meeting Is Now Open for Discussion_

Jolly Mrs. Sheesasite has the floor and wants some questions answered.