There is no evidence in its pages that the writer ever tried authorship before. He was over sixty-six years old, when, in a burst of gratitude for his relief from the burden of too much flesh, he took up his pen to tell his fellow-creatures of help for those who suffer a like infliction. The quaintness of his pages reminds one of Izaak Walton, from his opening sentences, where he declares, “Of all the parasites that affect humanity, I do not know of, nor can I imagine, any more distressing than that of obesity”--an opinion with which all his fellow-sufferers will agree. He is fond of terming his grievance a parasite, and the name slips out with a frequency which is like the echo of objurgations hurled at his infirmity. Being called to account for it later, he meekly declares that the word is used wholly in a figurative sense. His state might have justified a stronger epithet. No parents on either side, to use his own phrase, ever showed a tendency to corpulency, but between thirty and forty he found the habit growing upon him. His physician advised violent exercise, and he took to rowing. Finding his flesh increase, he consulted “high orthodox authority (never any inferior adviser), tried sea air and bathing, took gallons of physic and liquor potassæ, always by advice, rode horseback, drank the waters of Leamington, Cheltenham, and Harrowgate”--doses enough, we should think, to have disgusted him with life forever--“lived on sixpence a day, and earned it, at least by hard labor, and used vapor-baths and shampooing,” without any help for his infirmity. The rich gentleman found his position, the good things of this life, his houses, horses, and friends, small enjoyment, save as they lessened the increasing burden life heaped upon him. He was obedient and intelligent in using every means of relief suggested, but his doctors were of very small use to him. As he pathetically says, “When a corpulent man eats, drinks, and sleeps well, has no pain and no organic disease, the judgment of able men seems paralyzed.” His state was pitiable, and there are too many companions in distress who answer to the same picture. He could not tie his shoe, and often had to go down stairs slowly backward, to save the jar of increased weight on his ankles and knee-joints. Low living was prescribed, and he followed it so heartily that he brought his system into a low, irritable state, and broke out in boils and large carbuncles, for which he had to be treated and “toned up” in a way that brought him into heavier condition than ever.