He constitutes a wave of
discontent and a period of general depression. He is not expected
to be romantic and sentimental either. It is all right for a giraffe
to be sentimental, but not a hippopotamus. If you doubt me consult
any set of natural history pictures. The giraffe is shown with
his long and sinuous neck entwined in fond embrace about the neck
of his mate; but the amphibious, blood-sweating hippo is depicted
as spouting and wallowing, morose and misanthropic, in a mud puddle
off by himself. In passing I may say that I regard this comparison
as a particularly apt one, because I know of no living creature so
truly amphibious in hot weather as an open-pored fat man, unless
it is a hippopotamus.
Oh how true is the saying that nobody loves a fat man! When fat
comes up on the front porch love jumps out of the third-story window.
Love in a cottage? Yes. Love in a rendering plant? No. A fat
man's heart is supposed to lie so far inland that the softer emotions
cannot reach it at all. Yet the fattest are the truest, if you did
but know it, and also they are the tenderest and a man with a double
chin rarely leads a double life.
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