Samuel G. Blythe

“ After the ghosts ceased haunting and the desire had gone I found I could cheer up on skillfully absorbed mineral water. I am free to say that a good deal of the conversation I heard bored me a heap; but I did not let on. And the result has been that I am no longer forced to flock by myself, but can break into almost any company of good fellows and be as good a fellow as any of them, via the ginger-ale or mineral-water process of conviviality. ”

“ And if there is any phase of human enjoyment, any part of life, any occupation, avocation, divertisement, pleasure or pain where the fat man has the better of it in any regard, I failed to discover it in the twenty years during which I looked like the rear end of a hack and had all the bodily characteristics of a bale of hay. ”

“ If he is not a partaker of alcohol he has his troubles in finding a medium for his imbibing, unless he goes the entire limit and cuts out the society of all friends who drink, which leaves him in a rather sequestrated and senseless position—not, of course, that there are not plenty of interesting men who do not drink, but that so many interesting men do.
So the problem of a non-drinker resolves itself to this: How can he continue in the companionship of the men he likes, and who possibly like him, and not drink? ”

“ You are busy all the time—but get nowhere. Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Any man who has been accustomed to do the kind of drinking I did for twenty years, who likes the sociability and the companionship of it, will find that the sudden transition to a non-drinking life [Pg 60] will leave him with a pretty dull existence on his hands until he gets reorganized. This is the depressing part of it. You have nowhere to go and nothing to do. Still, though you may miss the fun of the evening, you have all your drinking friends lashed to the mast in the morning. ”

“ This time, instead of skirmishing valiantly for a space and then being ignominiously and fatly routed by the powerful forces of food and drink, I hung stolidly to the line of my original attack, harassed the enemy by a constant and deadly fire—and one morning discovered I had the foe on the run.
It always makes me laugh to hear people talk about losing flesh—unless, of course, the decrease in weight is due to illness. No healthy person, predisposed to fat, ever lost any flesh. If that person gets rid of any weight, or girth, or fat, it isn't lost—it is fought off, beaten off. ”

“ What I do mean is that there remains in every man a remembrance, the ghost of a desire, the haunting thoughts of how good a certain kind of a drink would taste, and a regret for joys of companionship with one's fellows in the old way and in the old game, which takes time—and a good deal of time—to eradicate.
It becomes a sort of state of mind. The body does not crave liquor. ”

“ When it comes to fooling oneself by oneself, the grandest performers are the boys who have a habit—no matter what kind of a habit—a habit! It may be smoking cigarettes, or walking pigeontoed, or talking through the nose, or drinking—or anything else. Any man can see with half an eye how drinking, for example, is hurting Jones; but he always argues that his own personal drinking is of a different variety and is doing him no harm. ”

“ I do not doubt that a man who could devote his whole time to the work could, by means of some of the appliances offered—from the apparatus in a gymnasium to rubber shirts, get off fat—nor do I doubt the efficacy of exercise and its accompaniments in the way of sweating and baths and all that; but when a person has a living to make these methods are useless, not through any demerit of their own but because the man who is fat hasn't the time or opportunity and, more than all, soon fails in the inclination to use them. ”

“ You have all known the man who says he quit drinking and never thought of drink again. He is a liar. He doesn't exist. No man in this world who had a daily habit of drinking ever quit and never thought of drinking again. Many men, because they habitually lie to themselves, think they have done this; but they haven't. The fact is, no man with a daily habit of drinking ever quit and thought of anything else than how good a drink would taste and feel for a time after he quit. ”

“ Moreover, they are the worst sort of liars, for they not only lie to others but commit the useless folly of lying to themselves. They may think they do not lie; but they do.
There is not one of them—not one—who is not visited by the ghost of good times, the wraith of former fun, now and then; or one who does not wonder whether it is worth the struggle and speculate on what the harm would be if he took a few for old time's sake. ”

“ Don't drink alcohol. The variations that can be played on this simple theme by a skillful doctor are endless. When a real specialist in fat reduction gets hold of you—a real, earnest reducer—he can contrive a diet that would make a living skeleton thin—and likewise put him in his little grave. I have had diets handed to me that would starve a humming-bird, and diets that would put flesh on a bronze statue; and all to the same end—reduction. Science has been monkeying with nourishment for the past ten or fifteen years to the exclusion of many other branches of research ”

“ I find I have much more time that I can devote to my business; that I think more clearly, feel better, do not make any loose statements under the exhilaration [Pg 59] of alcohol, and keep my mind on my number constantly. The item of time is the surprising item. It is astonishing how much time you have to do things in that formerly you used to drink in, with the accompaniment of all the piffle that goes with drinking! When you are drinking you are never too busy to take a drink and never too busy not to stop. ”

“ A non-drinking man is the master of his own time. If he wants sociability he can go and get it, up to such limits as he personally can attain for himself in his water-consuming capacity. A drinking man is not master of his time. He may think he is, but he is not. He is the creature of a habit that may be harmless, but which surely is insistent; and the habit dictates what he shall do with his leisure. ”

“ Now, mark you, I am not saying diet—scientific diet—is not a good thing, a magnificent step forward in the progress of this world; but I am saying that the average fat-reducing diet is impossible to any but a man or woman of the ultimate will-power, and is a hardship that need not be endured. I have tried these diets, and I know! They may help reduce flesh, but they are not easy to follow and they do not contain things that any person wants to eat or is accustomed to eat, or will eat, to the exclusion of things that person does want to eat and will eat. ”

“ There has been more flub-dub printed and spoken about drinking liquor than about any other employment, avocation, vocation, habit, practice or pleasure of mankind. Drinking liquor is a personal proposition, and nothing else. ”

“ Mental impressions and desires last far longer than physical ones, and by that time the mind has been reorganized along the new lines. Then comes the sure knowledge that it is all right; and after that time any man who has fought his fight and falls can be classed only as an idiot. What, in the name of Bacchus, is there to compensate a man in drinking again—after he has won his fight—for all the troubles and rigors of the battle from which he has emerged victorious? ”

“ You can't have anything to eat that you want to eat. You torture yourself for a space and lose some flesh; then when you do go back to your normal method of eating the flesh comes galloping back—and there you are! It is the same with exercise. You can take off fat by exercise; but, once you begin, you are doomed to everlasting exercise, for the minute you stop back comes the fat—and more of it than you had before you began to reduce.
It is a tough game, anyway you play it, if you are disposed to be fat. No man living, who isn't a freak, can persist always in one diet. ”