And I attribute the development of the less pleasant side of Cleopatra's disposition--keeping asps around the house and stabbing the bearers of unpleasant tidings with daggers and feeding people to the crocodiles and all that sort of thing--to the period when she found her anklets binding uncomfortably and along toward half past ten o'clock of an evening was seized by a well-nigh uncontrollable longing to excuse herself from the company and run upstairs and take off her jeweled stomacher and things and slip into something loose.
[Illustration: "64 BROAD."] But upon this subject men are less inclined to be fussy, and by the same token more inclined, on having accomplished a cure, to take a justifiable pride in it and to brag publicly about it.

As I stated a moment ago, I claim Mr.Blythe viewed the matter in a proper and commendable light when he took pen in hand to describe more or less at length his reduction processes.

So, too, did that other notable of the literary world, Mr.
Vance Thompson.

Mr.Thompson would be the last one to deny that once upon a time he undeniably was large.

The first time I ever saw him--it was in Paris some years ago, and he was walking away from me and had his back to me and was wearing a box coat--I thought for a moment they were taking a tractor across town.