Thinness is a matter of no great trouble to men.  They have no less strength, and are far more active.  The father of the young woman I spoke of, though, very thin, could seize a chair by his teeth and throw it over his head.

It is, however, a terrible misfortune to women, to whom beauty is more important than life, and the beauty of whom consists in the roundness and graceful contour of their forms.  The most careful toilette, the most, sublime needle-work, cannot hide certain deficiencies.  It has been said that whenever a pin is taken from a thin woman, beautiful as she may be, she loses some charm.

The thin have, therefore, no remedy, except from the interference of the faculty.  The regimen must be so long, that the cure must be slow.

Women, however, who are thin, and who have a good stomach, are found to be as susceptible of fat as chickens.  A little time, only, is necessary, for the stomach of chickens is comparatively smaller, and they cannot be submitted to as regular a diet as chickens are.

This is the most gentle comparison which suggested itself to me.  I needed one, and ladies will excuse me for the reason for which I wrote this chapter.

Natural predestination.

Nature varies its works, and has remedies for thinness, as it has for obesity.

Persons intended to be thin are long drawn out.  They have long hands and feet, legs thin, and the os coxigis retroceding.  Their sides are strongly marked, their noses prominent, large mouths, sharp chins and brown hair.

This is the general type, the individual elements may sometimes vary; this however happens rarely.

Thin people sometimetimes eat a great deal.  All I ever even talked with, confess that they digest badly.  That is the reason they remain thin.

They are of every class and temperament.  Some have nothing salient either in feature or in form.  Their eyes are inexpressive, their lips pale, and every feature denotes a want of energy, weakness, and something like suffering.  One might almost say they seemed to be incomplete, and that the torch of their lives had not been well lighted.

Fattening regimen.

All thin women wish to be fat; this is a wish we have heard expressed a thousand times.  To render, then, this last homage to the powerful sex, we seek to replace by folds of silk and cotton, exposed in fashion shops, to the great scandal of the severe, who turn aside, and look away from them, as they would from chimeras, more carefully than if the reality presented themselves to their eyes.

The whole secret of embonpoint consists in a suitable diet.  One need only eat and select suitable food.

With this regimen, our disposition to sleep is almost unimportant.  If you do not take exercise, you will be exposed to fatness.  If you do, you will yet grow fat.

If you sleep much, you will grow fat, if you sleep little, your digestion will increase, and you will eat more.