Here lies the body of Thomas Dollman,
A vastly _fat_, though not a very tall man;
Full twenty stone he weighed, yet I am told,
His captain thought him worth his weight in gold:
Grim Death, who ne'er to nobody shows favour,
Hurried him off for all his good behaviour;
Regardless of his weight, he bundled him away,
'Fore any one "Jack Robinson" could say.
A moral lesson is given in the following:--
But why he grew so fat i' th' waist,
Now mark ye the true reason,
When other people used to fast,
He feasted in that season.
So now, alas! hath cruel Death
Laid him in his sepulchre.
* * * * *
Therefore, good people, here 'tis seen,
You plainly may see here,
That fat men sooner die than lean,
Witness Fat Johnny Holder.
The son of a Dean, a man of very spare habit, expressing to the son of
a Bishop his astonishment at the great difference of the size of their
fathers, the Bishop being very fat, he explained the reason in the
following extempore parody of the old song:--
There's a difference between
A Bishop and a Dean,
And I'll tell you the reason why:
A Dean cannot dish up
A dinner like a Bishop,
To feed such a fat son as I.
Count Boruwlaski, the Polish Dwarf.
One of the best attested cases of dwarfish existence on record is
that of Joseph Boruwlaski, the Polish dwarf, who was the delight
of our grandfathers, and who, after the age of _seventy_, suddenly
found himself able with his hand to raise the latch of a door which
up to that period he had always raised with a stick. How many inches
he grew is not recorded, but the fact of his growth is sufficiently
astonishing, and is only paradoxical so long as we continue to hold
the general opinion that "men do not grow after reaching maturity,"
whereas, in strict language, we must admit that they _grow_ as long as
they live, but do not normally surpass the standard of maturity; growth
continues, but only to supply the waste, not enough, as in childhood,
to supply the waste and furnish _surplus_ for the increase.
Count Joseph Boruwlaski is, in many respects, the most interesting
dwarf of whom we have accurate records, and he has written his own
memoir to complete our interest. He has given us his height at various
epochs as follows:--
Ft. In.
At one year old he measured 0 11
At three „ „ 1 2
At six „ „ 1 5
At ten „ „ 1 9
At fifteen years old he measured 2 1
At twenty „ „ 2 4
At twenty-five „ „ 2 11
At thirty „ „ 3 3
[Illustration: Count Boruwlaski in disgrace with his wife.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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