One Third Off

One Third Off, by Irvin S. Cobb

The Project Gutenberg EBook of One Third Off, by Irvin S. Cobb This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: One Third Off
Author: Irvin S. Cobb
Illustrator: Tony Sarg
Release Date: July 4, 2005 [EBook #16197]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONE THIRD OFF ***

Produced by Bryan Ness, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.

One Third Off

By Irvin S. Cobb
Fiction
FROM PLACE TO PLACE THOSE TIMES AND THESE LOCAL COLOR OLD JUDGE PRIEST BACK HOME THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM
Wit and Humor
ONE THIRD OFF A PLEA FOR OLD CAP COLLIER THE ABANDONED FARMERS THE LIFE OF THE PARTY EATING IN TWO OR THREE LANGUAGES "OH WELL, YOU KNOW HOW WOMEN ARE!" FIBBLE D.D. "SPEAKING OF OPERATIONS--" EUROPE REVISED ROUGHING IT DE LUXE COBB'S BILL OF FARE COBB'S ANATOMY
Miscellany
THE THUNDERS OF SILENCE THE GLORY OF THE COMING PATHS OF GLORY "SPEAKING OF PRUSSIANS--"
* * * * *
New York
George H. Doran Company
* * * * *

[Illustration: I WEIGHED MYSELF AND IN THE BOX SCORE CREDIT
ED MYSELF WITH A PROFOUND SHOCK. Frontispiece]

One Third Off
By
Irvin S. Cobb
Author of "Old Judge Priest," "Speaking of Operations--" Etc.
Illustrated by Tony Sarg
New York
George H. Doran Company

Copyright, 1921,
By George H. Doran Company
Copyright, 1921,
By The Curtis Publishing Company
Printed in the United States of America

One Third Off
TO HARRY M. STEVENS, ESQUIRE WHO IN TIMES GONE BY HELPED ME PUT THAT ONE THIRD ON

CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
: PAGE Extra! Extra! All About the Great Reduction 15
CHAPTER TWO
: Those Romping Elfin Twenties 25
CHAPTER THREE
: Regarding Liver-Eating Watkins and Others 31
CHAPTER FOUR
: I Become the Panting Champion 41
CHAPTER FIVE
: On Acquiring Some Snappy Pores 55
CHAPTER SIX
: More Anon 65
CHAPTER SEVEN
: Office Visits, $10 75
CHAPTER EIGHT
: The Friendly Sons of the Boiled Spinach 95
CHAPTER NINE
: The Fallen Egg 111
CHAPTER TEN
: Wherein Our Hero Falters 121
CHAPTER ELEVEN
: Three Cheers for Lithesome Grace Regained 145

ILLUSTRATIONS
I weighed myself and in the box score credited myself with a profound shock Frontispiece
"64 Broad" 19
To observe Mr. Bryan breakfasting is a sight worth seeing 45
"You are now registering the preliminary warnings--" 87
CHAPTER I
Extra! Extra! All About The Great Reduction!
The way I look at this thing is this way: If something happens to you and by writing about it you can make a bit of money and at the same time be a benefactor to the race, then why not? Does not the philanthropic aspect of the proposition more than balance off the mercenary side? I hold that it does, or at least that it should, in the estimation of all fair-minded persons. It is to this class that I particularly address myself. Unfair-minded persons are advised to take warning and stop right here with the contemporary paragraph. That which follows in this little volume is not for them.
An even stronger motive impels me. In hereinafter setting forth at length and in detail the steps taken by me in making myself thin, or, let us say, thinner, I am patterning after the tasteful and benevolent examples of some of the most illustrious ex-fat men of letters in our country. Take Samuel G. Blythe now. Mr. Blythe is the present international bant-weight champion. There was a time, though, when he was what the world is pleased to call over-sized. In writing on several occasions, and always entertainingly and helpfully, upon the subject of the methods employed by him to reduce himself to his current proportions I hold that he had the right idea about it.
Getting fat is a fault; except when caused by the disease known as obesity, it is a bad habit. Getting thin and at the same time retaining one's health is a virtue. Never does the reductionist feel quite so virtuous as when for the first time, perhaps in decades, he can stand straight up and look straight down and behold the tips of his toes. His virtue is all the more pleasant to him because it recalls a reformation on his part and because it has called for self-denial. I started to say that it had called for mortification of the flesh, but I shan't. Despite the contrary opinions of the early fathers of the church, I hold that the mortification of the flesh is really based upon the flesh itself, where there is too much of it for beauty and grace, not merely upon the process employed in getting rid of it.
Ask any fat man--or better still, any formerly fat man--if I am not correct. But do not ask a fat woman unless, as in the case of possible fire at a theater, you already have looked about you and chosen the nearest