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.  You know Mrs. Sheesasite; her husband recently bought her a pair of freight scales.

[Sidenote:  Mrs. Sheesasite]

“Why is it, Doctor, that thin people can eat so much more than fat people and still not gain?”

[Sidenote:  Me Answering]

“First:  Thin people are usually more active than fat people and use up their food.

“Second:  Thin people have been proved to radiate fifty per cent more heat per pound than fat people; in other words, fat people are regular fireless cookers!  They hold the heat in, it cannot get out through the packing, and the food which is also contained therein goes merrily on with fiendish regularity, depositing itself as fat.

[Illustration:  Fireless Cookers.]

“And there are baby fireless cookers and children fireless cookers.  The same dietetic rules apply to them as to the adult.”

“I recognize Mrs. Tiny Weyaton; then you, Mrs. Knott Little.”

[Sidenote:  Mrs. Weyaton]

“We have heard you say that fat people eat too much, and still we eat so little?”

[Sidenote:  Me Again]

“Yes, you eat too much, no matter how little it is, even if it be only one bird-seed daily, if you store it away as fat.  For, hearken; food, and food only (sometimes plus alcohol) maketh fat.  Not water—­not air—­verily, nothing but food maketh fat. (And between you and me, Mrs. Weyaton, just confidential like—­don’t tell it—­we know that the small appetite story is a myth.)”

[Sidenote:  Mrs. Knott Little]

“But, Doctor, is it not true that some individuals inherit the tendency to be fat, and can not help it, no matter what they do?”

[Sidenote:  Doctor]

“Answer to first part—­Yes.

“Answer to second part—­No!  It is not true that they cannot help it; they have to work a little harder, that is all.  It is true that being fat is a disease with some, due to imperfect working of the internal secretory glands, such as the thyroid, generative glands, etc.; but that is not true fat such as you have.  Yours, and that of the other members who are interested, is due to overeating and underexercising.