Nina Wilcox Putnam

“ Anything to lie down on and cover our nakedness would have been welcome, and if you have ever tried to feel at your ease and cosmopolitan, clad only in a piece of Turkish towel and doing a Greek dance under the instruction of a Russian dancer, while but a plain American of the simpler sort by habit, you will sympathize. ”

“ As for going downtown on foot, or even over to Cousin Mary's on Ninety-sixth—well, what does a person have a car for anyway?
On Sundays, holidays and election days, instead of ferrying over to the Palisades and walking ten miles or less, as we used to before we could afford not to, we got out the bus and crowded our way into the procession which packed the main road to the most expensive roadhouse, and having eaten thereat we would climb back into the car and take an hour's healthy exercise riding over the bumps of the state highway. ”

“ Butternut, who has grown immensely rich quite recently, he being in the boot and shoe manufacturing business and making splendid legs to his riding boots. He has developed quite a trade in them, though I believe they are now used more on trains than on horses. Well, at any rate, George and I were down there on a visit and I couldn't help but notice that George often referred to a chicken who was also visiting there—a silly young thing, without any meat on her bones—in a tone which was intended to imply that I should share his elderly attitude of admiring the young folks. ”

“ But he signed a check and six notes, and they delivered the bus. And as heaven is my witness, at the time I thought he was doing me a favor—indeed I did.
Well, it seems that when we approximately bought his car it was just like anything else that inexperienced buyers buy—full of additional payments which the salesman had been glad not to trouble us with the mention of; and anyone who can remember buying their first automobile, house or installment piano will at once understand me only too well. ”

“ It was reasonable to suppose that there must be on the market some magic method of reducing without effort, provided especially for the convenience of us wealthy classes. With all the inflated millionaires round it seemed as though there must be a good many who were inflated in the personal sense and who would pay well to be deflated, as it were. ”

“ Besides, one-horse power isn't enough to a modern speed houndess who is accustomed to twenty-two and would like forty-four. Believe me, I don't think those old Roman circus riders who handled three were so very much.
So that let the horse out. And then, just as I was in despair, I discovered a way to get thin.
Indirectly it came about through that automobile-insurance agent whom I had so misjudged, but it was really due in the first place to George's accident. I say George's because strictly speaking it is George's car, and I merely happened to be driving it at the time. ”

“ After a while a person gets hep to transfer taxes, back interest, direct tax, state tax, luxury tax, insurance and the spare tire. But at the first whack all you seem to think of is the price in the catalogue and you congratulate yourself on your acumen in noting that it is subject to change without notice. Even the mystic f. o. b. is mistaken for a harmless trade-mark by many a novice. And the item we overlooked on our first car was the insurance. ”

“ On the other hand the fat girl is the only person who denies her increasing weight. Her husband, if she has one, her brothers, her father—become mercilessly truthful. Her only solace will be derived from some woman friend, who may minimize the terrible truth ”

“ When I went anywhere short of Buffalo I walked, and at home I used more elbow grease than I did cold cream. Sugar being only five cents a pound we didn't think enough of it to use very much, and as for an elevator in our flat house—why, elevator apartments with gas stoves in 'em cost seventy dollars a month or more, and we never even thought of such a thing. ”

“ For instance, it probably explains lawyers, salesmen, real-estate operators, motion-picture salaries and automobile insurance agents. But it does not and never can explain the lies which two people who are struggling against matrimony tell to each other.
Of course after father set me right I came to realize how a few white lies would help to make the operation of the burglary business, the sale of oil stock and other difficult units of our social structure a whole lot nearer to painless. So far so good. But we are an immoderate race; we never know when to quit. We go to such extremes! ”

“ And as we were discussing it the car somehow got on the wrong side of the road, and another car came round the corner unexpectedly and our car acted just like a horse, because the foot brake didn't work but the accelerator did. I can't think why, because that wasn't in the least what I intended. But need we dwell unnecessarily upon so painful a subject?
After it was all over including the exchange of numbers and we were in the train on the way home, George took charge of the situation in that wonderful masterly way of his which annoys me so. ”

“ One reason for our pathetic condition as above stated was that the money we got married on wouldn't have paid for a flivver, much less for a car or for a general house worker, much less a butler. You see, George and I were deeply in love, and so we were content to marry on really very little. Not like young people nowadays. ”

“ Revealed lay ten objects which I at first mistook for specimens of copper ore and thought I must have made the mistake of opening something from downtown intended for George. But there was also the Bally Banting Booklet, and in it I read the great secret for which I had loosened ten one-dollar rugs. I was to eat one specimen of corrugated solid-cast bun a week for ten weeks, and refrain from taking any other food at meal times, and to take absolutely nothing between meals. ”

“ Somehow I never could learn to change gears properly on a horse. He is always running in low when I'm in a hurry, or I step on the accelerator unintentionally but with disastrous effect, or else get to running along in high and can't work the brakes. ”

“ Of course it's just barely possible that if they were thinner it would be even happier, if you get the idea. But it's a fact just the same that men get by with more pounds and less hair than any woman would dare attempt even if the money was mostly hers. ”

“ I expect that my son, as soon as he exchanges long dresses for long pants, will begin to talk about marrying on two hundred a week, or some such ridiculous sum, and that I in my turn will swipe something out of the grocery account to make it possible, the same as mother did. ”

“ Of course as far as I could see it was Nature's method to put on flesh instead of taking it off, at least in most cases. For most of us are born fat, lots acquire fatness, and some say they try to thrust fatness upon themselves. ”

“ Watter you think? Way, we got prosperous, that's what; and then, lo, as the cashier says, came a slow change.
I didn't realize at first what our altered condition was going to mean to me, and I actually enjoyed moving into an apartment with three elevators. At the time there seemed nothing symbolic to me in this surplus of elevators. Nor in the installation of a telephone which brought my marketing to my bedside. ”

“ But there is one thing to be said for stout men—they generally admit their condition. True, the admission is usually made to some female with ulterior motives who is in prudence bound to deny the suggestion promptly. ”

“ Perhaps it is true that comparatively few girls genuinely adore a fat man, but they at least put up a pretty fair imitation of it, whereas if a woman slips from a ninety-eight-cent girdle to a twenty-dollar Number Thirty corset she may as well get interested in bridge, because the new dance steps are going to remain a mystery to her. ”

“ Yet on my word George hadn't told a soul up to then except the elevator boy; we hadn't seen anybody else whom we knew well enough to mention the fact to in a casual manner. And I don't think the elevator boy spilled it, because our phone rang on the first call before the elevator could have got downstairs.
There is certainly something uncanny about how they do it; probably every live insurance agent has a partner in the spirit world, and as soon as anybody buys a car the office boy sticks his head in the door and says, "Mr. ”

“ They have added hothouse grapes and mushrooms to the diet, and would do well on it, only she can't resist the three meals she gets free at our house, and so isn't losing as fast as she otherwise would. ”

“ That's where we plump ones have it on the skinny ones, eh, girls?
But this Swift Kick Electric Roller stuff was different from ordinary massage. Instead of putting on cold cream you put on a union suit. ”