Fatty

“ This house belongs to a man called Brink, who is a doctor and——"
"I know all that," I assured her.
"Oh, you do know all about it, then," quoth she; "I wasn't sure, you know. Most of the strange people that I find in my bedroom if I happen to look in for anything don't know anything at all about us. Fatty finds them—gathers them up, you know—and brings them home and feeds them and converts them to Socialism and puts them to bed, and when they wake up in the morning they have to have it all explained to them. Fatty is Dr. Brink, you know. ”

“ Dickie Deer Mouse was in such a cheerful mood that almost anything Fatty Coon might have said would have pleased him.
"My new house is just beyond the fence," Dickie explained. "But I'm afraid you can't very well visit me there," he added with a smile.
"Why not?" Fatty Coon inquired. "I'm as good a climber as anybody. I can climb the tallest tree you ever saw, without feeling dizzy. But of course I'm a bit heavier than you are. And if you've gone and picked out a nest that's a long way above the ground, among the smallest branches, it might not be safe for me to go all the way up to it." ”

“ He stopped at the very first ham he came to. There was no sense in going any further. And Fatty dropped on top of the ham and in a twinkling he had torn off a big, delicious mouthful.
Fatty could not eat fast enough. He wished he had two mouths—he was so hungry. But he did very well, with only ONE. In no time at all he had made a great hole in the ham. And he had no idea of stopping. But he did stop. He stopped very suddenly. For the first thing he knew, something threw him right down upon the floor. And the ham fell on top of him and nearly knocked him senseless. ”

“ Sometimes he went to the edge of the brook and tried to catch fish by hooking them out of the water with his sharp claws. Sometimes he went over to the swamp and hunted for duck among the tall reeds. And though he did not yet know how to catch a duck, he could always capture a frog or two; and Fatty ate them as if he hadn't had a mouthful of food for days.
To tell the truth, Fatty would eat almost anything he could get—nuts, cherries, wild grapes, blackberries, bugs, small snakes, fish, chickens, honey—there was no end to the different kinds of food he liked. He ate everything. ”

“ XVIII THE LOGGERS COME Fatty Coon was frightened; he had just waked up and he heard a sound that was exactly like the noise Farmer Green and his hired man had made when they cut down the tall chestnut tree where he was perched.
"Oh, Mother! What is it?" he cried.
"The loggers have come," Mrs. Coon said. "They are cutting down all the big trees in the swamp."
"Then we'll have to move, won't we?" Fatty asked.
"No! They won't touch this tree," his mother told him. "It's an old tree, and hollow—so they won't chop it down. It's only the good sound trees that they'll take." ”

“ XI MR. CROW'S PLAN Yes! Old Mr. Crow had made up his mind about something. After Jasper Jay and Frisky Squirrel and Fatty Coon had come and crouched under his umbrella, and Christopher Crane had perched himself on top of it, and Mr. Crow had fallen off the fence, the old gentleman decided that he would take no more chances. The next time it rained he knew exactly what he was going to do. ”

“ The excess flesh of the deputy marshal would have brought his nickname to the mind of an imbecile. However, Fatty was humming softly to himself, and it is not the habit of men who treat very sick patients to sing. ”

“ The recent researches of L. Langer have certainly shown that the fatty tissues of man vary at different ages, in the proportion of the fatty acids they contain.
I have had occasion, of late years, to watch with interest the process of somewhat rapid but quite wholesome gain in flesh in persons subjected to the treatment which I shall by and by describe. Most of these persons were treated by massage, and I have been accustomed to question the masseur or masseuse as to the manner in which the change takes place. ”

“ Fatty had been looking for frogs, but he had had no luck at all. To tell the truth, Fatty was a little too young to catch frogs easily, even when he found one; and he was a good deal too fat, for he was so plump that he was not very spry.
Now, Fatty was hiding behind some tall rushes, and his sharp little eyes were looking all about him, and his nose was twitching as he sniffed the air. He wished he might find a frog. But not one frog appeared. Fatty began to think that some other coon must have visited the creek just before him and caught them all. ”

“ Whiskers was explaining. “Very few men could go through what I have and live to tell the tale. And I never took any care of myself. If what the moralists and the physiologists say were true, I’d have been dead long ago. And it’s the same with you two. Look at us, at our advanced years, carousing as the young ones don’t dare, sleeping out in the open on the ground, never sheltered from frost nor rain nor storm, never afraid of pneumonia or rheumatism that would put half the young ones on their backs in hospital.”
He broke off to mix another drink, and Fatty took up the tale. ”

“ And fat robs the tragic ending of its depression. The sight of a normally-built woman expiring of heartbreak, or any other favorite operatic death, would be most distressing; but [Pg 212] the spectacle of a four-hundred pound consumptive, on a thickly-padded canvas-and-steel rock, breathing forth her everlasting last, like a moping walrus on a cake of ice—such a spectacle does not disturb us in the least, for we realize that all she needs is a fan. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ah, my dear, that has nothing to do with health. The fatter I get the more of me there is to feel bad. I won't be long for this world, I am thankful to say. Fat! Why, I have seen many a fat corpse—more fat ones than lean ones. ”

“ Sharpen thy sickle, which thou hast blunted through gluttony—sharpen it by fasting. Lay hold of the pathway which leads towards heaven; rugged and narrow as it is, lay hold of it, and journey on. And how mayest thou be able to do these things? By subduing thy body, and bringing it into subjection. For when the way grows narrow, the corpulence that comes of gluttony is a great hindrance. Keep down the waves of inordinate desires. Repel the tempest of evil thoughts. Preserve the bark; display much skill, and thou hast become a pilot. ”

“ I could hardly support my own weight; my legs were trembling with the burden; sweat broke out over my whole body; the rays of light beat down upon me fiercely, overpoweringly....
Desperately, I quickly turned the dial until the two red marks coincided. A great weight, soft and enveloping, seemed to drop upon me. The senses of sight and hearing and feeling all left me. ”

“ Yes! we are a self-indulgent race, this present generation. Witness our easily excited feelings; witness our late hours of rising, our sofas and easy chairs, our useless days and dissipated nights! Witness our pallid faces, our forms, sometimes attenuated and repulsive while yet in early life, age marching, not creeping, on before his time; or witness our over-fed and over-expanded forms, enfeebled by indolence, and suffering the worst species of debility—the debility of fat. ”

“ I would have you play a game at mumchance with your trusty fat man, while I muster your three hundred men-at-arms and swear them to my service. If your lordship’s grace will not babble so, and you will request that fat fellow whose bulk is so large as a bag, who is so undecent in his appearance as any sow that grouts in a kennel, if you will request him not to brawl so much, you will be able to pass the time of day agreeably, and without that excitement that is so inclement to the mind. ”

“ To be smothered with your own fat is a proper cruel end I call it; and I haven't deserved it; and it shakes my faith in an all-wise God, to feel myself turning into a useless mountain of flesh. Worse than useless in fact, because them that can't work themselves are certain sure to make work for others. ”

“ We all want to hear just how you can do it!" added the other girls.
"Why, just this, dears. We have had our food to nourish the body that must act at the suggestion of thought, and for this blessing we are grateful; for a weak, or impoverished body does not respond to the command of thought, no matter how willing it may be to act. After filling the receptacle for food one should not give way to lethargy—a common fault and inclination. Lethargy forms fat and soft muscles! ”

“ Should Avoid
¶ "Letting down," soft snaps and temptations to evade responsibility should be avoided by the fat. Elbert Hubbard said, "Blessed is the man who is not looking for a soft snap, for he is the only one who shall find it." This explains why the fat man, unless brainy, seldom lands one. ”

“ Fat, poor, poor Fat, who felt downcast because he was not going South, has gone on a far longer journey. It is the first tragedy that has come into our life here in our barracks and with the thoughts of the breaking up of the big family on the morrow, and the homesickness, that most of us feel because of our all too brief trips home, has cast a gloom over us all. ”

“ Ah, dear friend, to live for ever on my own fat seems to be my lot, or, as every one knows who has tried it, to drink my own blood! Life then becomes a matter of not losing one's thirst for oneself and also of not drinking oneself dry. ”

“ Fatness and good-humour are almost invariably found united, but which is the cause and which the effect—whether fat breeds good-nature or good-nature fat—is one of those profound mysteries of nature which old Burton might decide, but for which I have in vain sought a satisfactory solution. ”

“ Fat sides and bald heads are the symbols of music, innocence, and meek submission. O! ladies listen to the words of wisdom! Cultivate the society of fat men and bald-headed men, for "of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." And the fat women, God bless their old sober sides—they are "things of beauty, and a joy forever." ”

“ And you, poor deluded victim, are more than half willing to believe that your increasing size is an equivalent to increasing health and strength, especially as your wife emphatically takes that view, and regards your augmenting portliness with approval. Ten years have now passed away since you were forty, and by weight twelve stone and a half a fair proportion for your height and build. Now you turn the scale to one stone more, every ounce of which is fat; extra weight to be carried through all the labors of life. ”

“ Careful of Money
¶ You never saw a stingy fat man in your life. Imagine a two-hundred-pound miser! Neither have you ever seen a really stingy man who was red-faced and high-chested. Nor have you ever found a real Muscular who was a "tightwad." ”

“ They knew neither food, nor sleep, nor health; nor could they ever possibly know the sting of real appetite, the goodly ache of fatigue, nor the rush of mad strong blood that bit like wine through all one's body as work was done. ”

“ How then, O my dear Royce, can I forget you, or be contented out of your close neighborhood? Different as our minds are, yours has nourished mine, as no other social influence ever has, and in converse with you I have always felt that my life was being lived importantly. Our minds, too, are not different in the Object which they envisage. It is the whole paradoxical physico-moral-spiritual Fatness, of which most people single out some skinny fragment, which we both cover with our eye. ”

“ I and my infirmity are left exposed and bare to the broad, unwinking eye of the world, which nothing can elude. My meals are scanned, my mouthfuls weighed in a balance; that which appetite demands is set down to the account of gluttony—a sin which my whole soul abhors—nay, which Nature herself has put it out of my power to commit. ”

“ I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me. I am gone like the shadow when it declineth: I am tossed up and down like the locust: My knees are weak through fasting, and my flesh faileth of fatness. ”

“ Surely, if the soul should be nourished with body, it would carry itself better there, where the fecundity of the material is, (as Jamblichus argues) ; so that when a large fat body presents itself, we should imagine that it were the habitation of a strong soul, firm, ready and heroic, and we should say: Oh, fat soul, oh, fecund spirit, oh, fine nature, oh, divine intelligence, oh, clear mind, oh, blessed repast, fit to spread before lions, or verily for a banquet for dogs. ”

“ The man who has advanced just far enough in life to have completed his development of growth, and to have lost the elasticity of youth, the man who has rather too early in life become fat and, as he or his friends say, puffy, the man who has, from long confinement in the office or study, found himself dejected and dyspeptic, each one of these men has passed into the ranks of the Volunteers, in order to regain the elastic tread, to throw off the burden of fat, or to find relief from the dyspeptic despondency. ”

“ Such is the name given in certain circles to a peculiar species of mankind which grows fat at other people's expense, which does absolutely nothing and has no desire to do anything, and whose heart has turned into a lump of fat from everlasting slothfulness and idleness. ”

“ I know how to keep myself fat; the young women look at me and say, 'Imbat is very handsome, he is fat'—they will look at you and say, 'He not good—long legs—what do you know? Where is your fat? What for do you know so much, if you can't keep fat? ”

“ But we dive under and go on, coming presently to the Fat Man’s Misery. This is a serpentine passage, its walls changing direction eight times in two hundred and thirty-six feet, its width but eighteen inches and its height in places only five feet. It is indeed enough to try a fat man’s soul and body. The sides are marked by ripples and waves, and are polished by the friction of many vexed visitors. ”

“ I'm sure I ought to have been more lucky through life, being so very wide awake. And yet here I am, without a place, or even a friend, starving upon a beggarly twenty pounds a year—not a single sixpence more, upon my honor. ”