Cobb's Anatomy

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Dr. Woods Hutchinson says that fat people are happier than other people. How does Dr. Woods Hutchinson know? Did he ever have to leave the two top buttons of his vest unfastened on account of his extra chins? Has the pressure from within against the waistband where the watchfob is located ever been so great in his case that he had partially to undress himself to find out what time it was? Does he have to take the tailor's word for it that his trousers need pressing?

He does not. And that sort of a remark is only what might be expected from any person upward of seven feet tall and weighing about ninety-eight pounds with his heavy underwear on. I shall freely take Dr. Woods Hutchinson's statements on the joys and ills of the thin. But when he undertakes to tell me that fat people are happier than thin people, it is only hearsay evidence with him and decline to accept his statements unchallenged. He is going outside of his class. He is, as you might say, no more than an innocent bystander. Whereas I am a qualified authority.

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When planning public utilities, who thinks of a fat man? There never was a hansom cab made that would hold a fat man comfortably unless he left the doors open, and that makes him feel undressed. There never was an orchestra seat in a theater that would contain all of him at the same time—he churns up and sloshes out over the sides. Apartment houses and elevators and hotel towels are all constructed upon the idea that the world is populated by stock-size people with those double-A-last shapes.

Take a Pullman car, for instance. One of the saddest sights known is that of a fat man trying to undress on one of those closet shelves called upper berths without getting hopelessly entangled in the hammock or committing suicide by hanging himself with his own suspenders. And after that, the next most distressing sight is the same fat man after he has undressed and is lying there, spouting like a sperm-whale and overflowing his reservation like a crock of salt-rising dough in a warm kitchen, and wondering how he can turn over without bulging the side of the car and maybe causing a wreck. Ah me, those dark green curtains with the overcoat buttons on them hide many a distressful spectacle from the traveling public!

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