<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II" /><span class='smcap'>chapter ii</span></h2>
<h2><i>Those Romping Elfin Twenties</i></h2>
<p>It has been my personal observation, viewing the matter at close range,
that nearly always fat, like old age or a thief in the dark, steals upon
one unawares. I take my own case. As a youngster and on through my teens
and into my early twenties—ah, those romping elfin twenties!—I was, in
outline, what might be termed dwindly, not to say slimmish. Those who have
known me in my latter years might be loath to believe it, but one of my
boyhood nick-names—I had several, and none of them was complimentary but
all of them were graphic—was Bonesy. At sixteen, by striping myself in
alternate whites and blacks, I could have hired out for a surveyor's rod.
At twenty-one I measured six feet the long way, and if only mine had been
a hook nose I should have cast a shadow like a shepherd's crook.</p>
<p>My avocation in life was such as to induce slenderness. I was the city
staff of a small-town daily paper, and what with dodging round gathering
up items about people to write for the paper and then dodging round to
avoid personal contact with the people I had written the items about for
the paper, I was kept pretty constantly upon the go. In our part of the
country in those days the leading citizens were prone to take offense at
some of the things that were said of them in the public prints and given
to expressing their sense of annoyance forcibly. When a high-spirited
Southern gentleman, regarding whom something of a disagreeable nature had
appeared in the news columns, entered the editorial sanctum without
knocking, wearing upon his crimsoned face an expression of forthright
irritation and with his right hand stealing back under his coat skirt, it
was time for the offending reporter to emulate the common example of the
native white-throated nut-hatch and either flit thence rapidly or hunt a
hole.</p>
<p>Since prohibition came in and a hiccup became a mark of affluence instead
of a social error, as formerly, and a loaded flank is a sign of
hospitality rather than of menace, things may have changed. I am speaking,
though, of the damper early nineties in Kentucky, when a sudden motion
toward the right hip pocket was a threat and not a promise, as at present.
So, what with first one thing and then another, now collecting the news of
the community and now avoiding the customary consequences, I did a good
deal of running about hither and yon, and kept fit and spry and
stripling-thin.</p>
<p>Yet I ate heartily of all things that appealed to my palate, eating at
least two kinds of hot bread at every meal—down South we say it with
flours—and using chewing tobacco for the salad course, as was the custom.
I ate copiously at and between meals and gained not a whit.</p>
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