the colonel was royally in his element now. on no occasion before during all the time of detention had he played with so free a hand or felt himself so much an element of good among his fellow creatures. the psychological hour had come for him.
"we should congratulate ourselves," he resonantly declared. "where else or under what other circumstances could have been accidentally assembled such a number of people so qualified to minister mentally to each other and make otherwise dead hours breathe as we who are here now looking into each other's eyes?" then, very properly, feeling that he had expressed himself rather finely, he continued, "we will not waste the shining hour. we must have other stories. mr. showman, have you anything to say?"
had the colonel not known very well what he was about his last sentence would have been as tactless as it seemed to everybody cruel,[259] and even his trusting and admiring wife looked upon him in a startled way as he thus addressed himself to an exceedingly florid man in somewhat florid garb, but with, nevertheless, an air of intelligence of the better sort and one of general understanding. he had been a not infrequent visitor and had listened quietly and with evident delight to what he had heard. the colonel had not offended him in the least by the blunt application of the word "showman." the two knew each other and, besides, the title belonged to him properly and he was not at all ashamed of it. on the contrary, he was rather proud of it. he looked at the colonel in a meditative way and took his time. he had faced audiences—though, perhaps, none quite so select, before—and finally remarked, very simply and to the admiration of everybody:
"you can't expect much of a plain, uneducated showman, but i know of one story, a sort of love story, too, which a friend of mine who owns a dime museum told me. i'm in the circus business myself, so do not know as much about what you might call family details as he would, but this is what he gave me. he was tickled and used some large words:[260]
love will find the way
the ossified man was in love with the fat woman. such things happen. men are falling in love with women every day and apparent absurdities and incongruities do not count. love asks no odds. the ossified man was in love with the fat lady. she weighed six hundred and eighty-three pounds; he weighed just eighty-three. it may have been that this singular coincidence, as shown on the billboards throughout the city, first drew the two together. who can tell? they became acquainted and then began one of the love affairs of the thousand myriads, with which the world is at all times occupied.
the fat lady was fair to look upon. she had the tremendous advantage of being a landscape as well as a personality. she was, somehow, healthy, and her far-outstanding flesh was firm and white, despite her mountainous proportions. she rose and fell rythmatically as a mass with each inhalation of her fortunately great lungs and reminded one, in a way, of a volcano half quiescent. this, though, would be an utterly wrong simile. there was nothing fiery about her. her round face showed but a somewhat intensified benevolence. upon second thought—because she had what she deemed taste in dress and[261] wore a variety of outside ribbon things upon her looming corsage and vast flowers upon her hat—she reminded one, billowy and heaving and with green and flowery things atop her, of the ever soft and rolling and lifting sargasso sea. she was a good girl in her way and had come from indiana.
the ossified man was nearly six feet in height, was one of the best known specimens in the show world of what may be called an animated stalactite and could scarcely be called ungraceful though a slightly too robust skeleton. his joints were singularly flexible yet and his digestion and his mind were active. "stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage." thus he explained the quality of the personality of the two.
the wooing of the ossified man was in the nature of an innovation. he recognized the attitude in the community occupied by his inamorata and himself, not merely toward each other but with relation to all the outside world, and he conducted himself accordingly.
what the ossified man did—and it is greatly to his credit—was to do what any other man of his grade would do. neither he nor the fat woman were highly educated but each had been[262] through a school and each had read and could understand things and each had intelligence and no little sentiment. as remarked, the ossified man made his advances as would any other man of his degree. the two came to understand each other in a way and the fat woman began to feel somewhere, far away in her system, something she had never felt before. in truth she was beginning to fall in love with the ossified man. not being a fool, the ossified man knew it. he realized the fact that he had found another being of the other sex, of good sense, though out of the common in appearance, as sentimental as he, the great heart once fairly stirred. affairs drifted. he knew that he was going to propose to her and she knew that he was going to ask her to be his wife. that reflection, somehow, startled her throughout all her vast being, though a dim sub-consciousness told her that she liked him much. as for him, he resolved to stake the future upon a single poem he sent to her, confident that she would accept it gravely. and these are the few lines she received:[263]
"all flesh is grass, and grass must turn to clay;
all bones must turn to dust, and we are they!
since thus we turn, my own, my colleen bawn,
why not unite before our breath is gone?
it is the judgment ever of the sage
that happiness is in the average;
what better equipoise than you and i,
what more assured? o, sweetheart, let us try!"
the fat woman was impressed but, more than that, and better in ten thousand ways, she was delighted that the man she realized she loved had finally dared to express himself, though in this odd, sentimental way. she thought much and then—there is shade of correction added—she wrote this letter:
dear jim:—i understand your poem. i won't fool a bit. i care for you, jim, as you care for me. but we will be a joke if we get married now. can't you see that, jim? can't we get more like each other before we get married? we have both saved quite a lot of money. oh, jim, if you'll try to get thicker, i'll try to get thinner.
lovingly,
sarah."
the ossified man read that letter and went out and walked up and down the streets for hours. he was the happiest and most perplexed man in all the big city. his heart at least wasn't ossified.
he remembered a professor who had studied him and whom he had heard say to those about that there was no occasion for the continued[264] ossification in such a subject, provided the stomach was all right. "i'll go to that old professor," he said, "and i'll put the case to his giblets in a way to make him salty round the eyes. and i'll write all about it to my little girl, god bless 'er!"
so his "little girl" got the letter and cried largely and with vast resources and, as we say, "braced up." "he is good, my jim," she said to herself; "and i'll meet him half way, god bless him! i know a professor too, and i'll see him."
so each went to a professor.
professor mcflush was the doctor whose portrait accompanied an advertisement regularly in the sunday papers, and whom the ossified man had in mind. he didn't hesitate an instant after an examination of what there was of his patient. "i'll cure you in no time if you follow my directions," he declared. "my sulphuretted tablets will knock out the ossification and as for the rest it's all diet."
"what diet?" asked the ossified man.
"hash!" roared the doctor. "do you drink much?"
"naw," said the ossified man.
"well, you've got to—hash—hash and porter.[265] hash is fattening, the potatoes in it does it. porter is fattening, the malt in it does it. them and my tablets together will do the business—seventeen tablets a day—dollar a bottle, thirty-four in a bottle. five tablets before breakfast, and for breakfast hash and two bottles of porter. dinner the same; supper the same. anything else you want eat or drink all day long. last two tablets just before you go to bed. get your prescriptions filled here. get your porter over at johnson's wholesale grocery, i've made an arrangement with him. ten dollars. report weekly. good day."
and the ossified man took up his task for love's sake.
it was to professor slocum that the fat woman went. professor slocum was brisk and small but he had a way with the ladies.
the fat woman believed in him implicitly from the moment they met.
"do you eat much?" was the first query of the professor.
"yes sir, considerable."
"do you drink much?"
"yes sir, some ale, and water most all the time."
"madam, i am astonished! keep on with[266] that diet and you'll weigh half a ton before you die, and you'll die within six months."
the fat woman gasped and turned pallid. she was influenced not only by love but by acute alarm.
the professor looked upon her benignly.
"madam," he said, "i can save you. my condensed food tablets and my spirituelle waters will do the business. the tablets will afford you sufficient sustenance for existence without affording any element for the increase of adipose tissue, while my spirituelle waters will gratify your thirst—the more you drink of them the better—while, at the same time, they will exercise an influence of their own. get your tablets here at this office—fifty cents a hundred—spirituelle waters here too—quart bottles, twenty-five cents a bottle. prescription: ten tablets and one bottle of the water to a meal; another bottle of the waters before retiring. drink all the spirituelle water you want during the day. ten dollars. report fortnightly. good afternoon."
the professors knew their business. there could be no doubt of that. not with any sunburst, so to speak, but steadily and day by day, the ossified man increased in flexibility and[267] tissue and the fat woman decreased in fat.
there came a day when the museum manager observed the change and sent for the ossified man.
"what's the matter, jim?" asked the potentate.
"nothing that i know of," was the answer.
"do you weigh any more than you did, jim?"
"about twenty-five pounds, i believe," was the hesitating answer.
"i'll see you in my office at two o'clock this afternoon."
then the fat woman was sent for and questioned.
"how much do you weigh, sarah?" was the first query.
"six hundred and twenty-three pounds, sir," was the truthful answer.
"huh!" said the manager. "sixty pounds gone sarah! i'll see you in my office at two o'clock this afternoon."
an hour later the ossified man and the fat woman were engaged in earnest conversation. after a pause the fat woman remarked thoughtfully:
"jim, we're going to get the g. b."
"looks that way," said the ossified man.[268]
"do you care much?"
"nope," said the ossified man, "only i wish we each could have gathered in our fifty per for another six months or so."
"well, i don't care!" said the fat woman, lovingly and desperately. "i've saved up about six thousand and you've got about five, and the three or so can go."
"suits me," said the ossified man.
the meeting in the manager's office that afternoon was spirited but good-natured.
"heard you'd got stuck on each other and were trying to size up together," said the manager.
"about the size of it," said the ossified man.
"well, it strikes me that there are two sizes yet," said the manager, "but that doesn't matter. you are knocking out two of my attractions. i'll have to let you both go at the end of the week."
"all right," said the ossified man, good-naturedly. "but," he added, as a second thought struck him, "say, sarah is going one way and i'm going the other and there is no telling how far we may happen to pass. it might happen that we might want a job again. now when[269] i come back as the fat man, and she as the ossified woman, will you take us on?"
the manager roared: "yes, when you come back weighing six hundred and eighty-three, and sarah eighty-three, i'll engage you, you bet!"
the fat woman listened approvingly.
and now the two are on a fine farm in indiana and are happy. she still takes professor slocum's condensed food tablets and spirituelle waters, and he still takes professor mcflush's sulphuretted tablets and porter, and they are growing more and more alike in appearance, as they are in thoughts and aims, and have the best and most comfortable understanding. but they'll never get back to the museum. they wouldn't if they could.
isn't it wonderful what love can do!
