Page:Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son.djvu/192

Rh or ten times a day. The first thing he knew he had fatted up till he filled out his half suit and had to put it away in camphor. Then he bought a whole suit, living-skeleton size. In two weeks he had strained a shoulder seam and looked as if he was wearing tights. So he retired it from circulation and moved up a size. That one was a little loose, and it took him a good month to crowd it.

Josh was a pretty hefty man now, but he kept right on bulging out, building on an addition here and putting out a bay window there, all the time retiring new suits, until his wife had fourteen of them laid away in the chest.

Said it didn't worry him; that he was bound to lose flesh sooner or later. That he would catch them on the way down, and wear them out one at a time. But when he got up to three hundred and fifty pounds he just stuck. Tried exercise and dieting and foreign waters, but he couldn't budge