If you can tell me anything more ghastly than taking a system of canned exercises in the morning or at night in one's bedroom or bathroom, or elsewhere, with no other incentive than some physical gain that, when you come to sum it up, is largely fictitious in value--or comes inevitably to be thought so--I would like to have you step forward and name it. I have been all through that phase of it, and I know; and I also know by heart the patter of the persons who recommend it. Further, I know the person round the forties doesn't live who enjoys this sort of thing--no matter what he says about it; and without enjoyment exercise is of no use or worse than useless. It can be done, of course; and lumps of muscle can be stuck on almost any part of the body--but what's the use to the person who has to make a living? Then, too, I am speaking now of methods that can be used by men and women who are no longer young. A young man can and will do stunts in physical culture that an older man cannot do, either satisfactorily or comfortably. So far as the medicinal or drug method of fat reduction is concerned, any fat man or woman who takes drugs to reduce flesh, or to help, deserves all that he or she will get--and that will be plenty. There's no need of saying anything further on that subject. Then there remains the dietary method--the old familiar friend, diet. Starting with William Banting--maybe it didn't start with William, but before him--but, starting with Bill for present purposes, there have been more systems of diet invented and promulgated than there have been systems of religion--and that means about one in every hundred has evolved a system.