One Third Off

One Third Off, by Irvin S. Cobb

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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
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THIRD OFF ***

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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