The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-11-24


 Weight She Refused to be DeIuded by Her zeaIOus and Thoughtful Hus-
 band.
 It keeps me pretty busy assuring my wife that she's not what you might call honest Injun fat.'' said the small, sparsely built man, with the mild eyes Is she fat? Far be it from me to come right out and express an opinion as to that. But she is about five feet and one-sixteenth of an inch high and weighs ordinarily between one hum dred and eighty-f1ye and one hundred and ninety pounds. So that you may draw your own conclusions.
 For number of years now she has been going up against all of these How to take off forty pounds in twenty minutes. and Leanness made easy and Regain your sylph-like form and Why be p-h-a-t' preparations. In fact, she has tried every one of the treatments and fat cures except the one which requires fat folks to stop eating three heavy meals a day, with a pound or so of chocolate creams thrown in, and which makes it mandatory for the reducer to walk at least two blocks a day. and still she keeps her weight.
 But started to speak of my con- tinuous performance job of assuring her that she isn't what you might real ly call sure enough, oss-your-heart stout.
 For example, when we're walking on the street. and she sees coming from the opposite direction woman who Is really much less stout than she is. she nudges me, and fires at me volley of questions like these:
 For mercy's sake, am such sight as that woman?
 "sTell me, honestly, now, do wad- dle like that woman?
 "Pity sakes, alive, haven't more of a waist line than she has?
 "sIf thought was as fat and pudgy looking as that woman, don't know what I'd do. Am I?'
 .And so on. And, of course, I have to scramble to the front every time and reply to her interrogations just the way she wants me to reply to them. She's a sensitive woman, and I would not want her to feel any worse over her robustness than she already does for anything.
 "But she went up against the catas- trophe while we were on the Pike at the St. Louis fair the other day. We'd been traveling about for a couple of weeks, and she was perfectly certain that the activity and excitement had reduced her amazingly.
 1T am going to let one of those Pike weight guessers guess my weight this evening" she said to me on the day af- ter we had made our first visit to the Pike.
 q was rather glad that she gave me the tip in advance. So, when we reached the Pike that evening, l depos- ited her in a knick-knack pavilion, and told her that I was going across the way to get a smoke, and would be back in a minute. I crossed over to where one of the weight guessers was presid- ing over the scales, and slipped him a half dollar.
 sI'u be bringing a lady over here presently I said to the weight guesser, and I want you to let her down easy. See? She's sensitive about her weight, and you can let her out with about if teen pounds under what she really weighs Understand?
 aOf course he understood. He was one of those chaps who announces that if he doesn't guess within three pounds of your weight you need not pay him the nickel which he exacts if his guess is within the three pound limit, and the scheme of all these weight guessers is frame up.
 Well, T turned to the pavilion where my wife was waiting, and after few minutes suggested to her that now would be a good time for her to get weighed and find out how much she had lost since leaving New York.
 sOh, yes, come on right now she exclaimed delightedly, and I steered her over to the weight guesser whom I had fixed.
 .sThe weight guesser looked her over carefully, scratched his head a bit tipping me crafty wink on the side and said:
 ]" It's mighty hard to guess the weight of ladies when they are so per fectly proportioned and symmetrical, but femme see--I should say that you weigh about one hundred and seventy six pounds
 My wife was in a perfect blaze oi joy as she sat in the swinging scales. The weight guesser kept his hand on the rim of the scales, as usual, and ap- piled the proper pressure upward. and when he said Just one hundred and