- But when you take on fat you are doing to your engine what a Ford driver would be doing to his if he loaded his car with brick or sc.r.a.p iron.
A Ford owner who intended to transport bricks the rest of his life could get a big-cylinder engine and subst.i.tute it for the original but you can"t do that. This little four-cylinder affair is the only one you will ever have and no amount of money, position or affection can buy you a new one if you mistreat it. Like the Ford engine, it will stand for a good many pounds of excess baggage and still do good work. But if you load on too much and keep it there the day will come when its cylinders begin to skip.
- You may take it to the service station and pay the doctors to grind the valves, fix your carbureter and put in some new spark plugs. These may work pretty well as long as you are traveling the paved highway of Perfect Health; you may keep up with the procession without noticing anything particularly wrong.
But come to the hill of Pneumonia or Diabetes and you are very likely not to make the grade.
Don"t "Kill Your Engine"
- The records in America show that thousands of men and women literally "kill their engines" every year when they might have lived many years longer.
How Each Finds Happiness.
- We live for happiness and each type finds its greatest happiness in following those innate urges determined by the most highly-developed system in its makeup.
The Alimentive"s disposition, nature, character and personality are built by and around his alimentary system. He is happiest when gratifying it and whenever he thwarts it he is miserable, just as the rest of us are when we thwart our predominant system.
The World Needs Him.
- This type has so many traits needed by the world, however, and has such extreme capacity for enjoying life that the race, not to mention himself, would profit greatly by his denying himself excessive amounts of food.
Enjoyment the Keynote of This Type.
- The good things of life--rich, abundant food and everything that serves the personal appet.i.tes--are the cravings of this type.
He purchases and uses more of the limousines, yachts and chefs than any other three types combined, and gets more for his money out of them than others do. The keynote of his nature is personal enjoyment. His senses of touch and taste are also especially acute.
The Fat Man Loves Comfort.
- You can tell a great deal about a man"s type by noting for what cla.s.ses of things he spends most of his extra money.
The Alimentive may have no fire insurance, no Liberty bonds, no real estate but he will have all the modern comforts he can possibly afford.
Most of the world"s millionaires are fat and Human a.n.a.lysis explains why. We make few efforts in life save to satisfy our most urgent demands, desires, and ambitions. Each human type differs in its cravings from each of the others and takes the respective means necessary to gratify these cravings.
The Alimentive craves those luxuries, comforts and conveniences which only money can procure for him.
The Fat Millionaire.
- When the Alimentive is a man of brains he uses his brains to get money. No fat person enjoys work but the greater his brain capacity the more will he forego leisure to make money.
When the Fat Man is in Average Circ.u.mstances.
- Any man"s money-making ambitions depend largely on whether money is essential to the satisfaction of his predominating instincts.
If he is fat and of average brain capacity he will overcome his physical inertia to the point of securing for himself and his family most of the comforts of modern life.
The average-brained fat man composes a large percentage of our population and the above accounts for his deserved reputation as a generous husband and father.
The Fat Man a Good Provider.
- The fat man will give his last cent to his wife and children for the things they desire but he is not inclined as much as some other types to hearken to the woes of the world at large. The fat man is essentially a family man, a home man, a respectable, cottage-owning, tax-paying, peaceable citizen.
Not a Reformer.
- He inclines to the belief that other families, other communities, other cla.s.ses and other countries should work out their own salvation and he leaves them to do it. In all charitable, philanthropic and community "drives" he gives freely but is not lavish nor sentimental about it. It is often a "business proposition" with him.
When the Fat Man is Poor.
- Love of ease is the fat man"s worst enemy. His inherent contentment, accentuated by the inconvenience of moving about easily or quickly, constantly tempts him to let things slide. When he lacks the brain capacity for figuring out ways and means for getting things easily he is never a great success at anything.
When the extremely fat man"s mentality is below the average he often refuses to work--in which case he becomes a familiar figure around public rest rooms, parks and the cheaper hotel lobbies. Such a man finally graduates into the cla.s.s of professional chair-warmers.
Fat People Love Leisure.
- A chance to do as we please, especially to do as little hard work as possible, is a secret desire of almost everybody. But the fat man takes the prize for wanting it most.
Not a Strenuous Worker.
- He is not constructed to work hard like some of the other types, as we shall see in subsequent chapters. His overweight is not only a handicap in that it slows down his movements, but it tends to slow down all his vital processes as well and to overload his heart. This gives him a chronic feeling of heaviness and inertia.
Everybody Likes Him.
- But Nature must have intended fat people to manage the rest of us instead of taking a hand at the "heavy work." She made them averse to toil and then made them so likable that they can usually get the rest of us to do their hardest work for them.
The World Managed by Fat People.
- When he is brainy the fat man never stays in the lower ranks of subordinates. He may get a late start in an establishment but he will soon make those over him like him so well they will promote him to a chief-clerkship, a foremanship or a managership. Once there he will make those under him so fond of him that they will work long and hard for him.
Fat Men to the Top.
- In this way the fat man of real brains goes straight to the top while others look on and bewail the fact that they do most of the actual work. They fail to recognize that the world always pays the big salaries not for hand work but for head work, and not so much for working yourself as for your ability to get others to work.
The Popular Politician.
- This capacity for managing, controlling and winning others is what enables this type to succeed so well in politics. The fat man knows how to get votes. He mixes with everybody, jokes with everybody, remembers to ask how the children are--and pretty soon he"s the head of his ward. Almost every big political boss is fat.
Makes Others Work.
- One man is but one man and at best can do little more than a good man-size day of work. But a man who can induce a dozen other man-machines to speed up and turn out a full day"s work apiece doesn"t need to work his own hands. He serves his employer more valuably as an overseer, foreman or supervisor.
The Fat Salesman.
- "A fat drummer" is such a common phrase that we would think our ears deceived us did anyone speak of a thin one. Approach five people and say "A traveling salesman," each will tell you that the picture this conjures in his imagination is of a fat, round, roly-poly, good natured, pretty clever man whom everybody likes.
For the fat men are "born salesmen" and they make up a large percentage of that profession. Salesmanship requires mentality plus a pleasing personality. The fat man qualifies easily in the matter of personality. Then he makes little or much money from salesmanship, according to his mental capacity.
The Drummers" Funny Stories.
- You will note that the conversation of fat people is well sprinkled with funny stories. They enjoy a good joke better than any other type, for a reason which will become more and more apparent to you.
- That salesmen are popularly supposed to regale each customer with yarns till he gasps for breath and to get his signature on the dotted line while he is in that weakened condition, is more or less of a myth. It originated from the fact that most salesmen are fat and that fat people tell stories well.
Jokes at Fat Men"s Expense.
- "Look at Fatty," "get a truck," and other jibes greet the fat man on every hand. He knows he can not proceed a block without being the b.u.t.t of several jokes, but he listens to them all with an amiability surprising to other types. And this good nature is so apparent that even those who make sport of him are thinking to themselves: "I believe I"d like that man."
The Fat Man"s Habits.
- "Never hurry and never worry" are the unconscious standards underlying many of the reactions of this type. If you will compile a list of the habits of any fat person you will find that they are mostly the outgrowths of one or both of these motives.
Won"t Speed Up.
- You would have a hard time getting an Alimentive to follow out any protracted line of action calling for strenuosity, speed or high tension. He will get as much done as the strenuous man when their mentalities are equal--and often more. The fat person keeps going in a straight line, with uniform and uninterrupted effort, and does not have the blow-outs common to more fidgety people. But hard, fast labor is not in his line.
Loves Comedy.
- All forms of mental depression are foreign to fat people as long as they are in normal health. We have known a fat husband and wife to be ejected for rent and spend the evening at the movies laughing like four-year-olds at Charlie Chaplin or a Mack Sennett comedy. You have sometimes seen fat people whose financial condition was pretty serious and wondered how they could be so cheerful.
Inclined to Indolence.
- Fat people"s habits, being built around their points of strength and weakness, are necessarily of two kinds--the desirable and the undesirable.
The worst habits of this type are those inevitable to the ease-loving and the immature-minded.
Indolence is one of his most undesirable traits and costs the Alimentive dear.
In this country where energy, push and lightning-like efficiency are at a premium only the fat man of brains can hope to keep up.
The inertia caused by his digestive processes is so great that it is almost insurmountable. The heavy, lazy feeling you have after a large meal is with the fat man interminably because his organism is constantly in the process of digesting large amounts of food.
Likes Warm Rooms.
- Love of comfort--especially such things as warm rooms and soft beds--is so deeply imbedded in the fiber of this type that he has ever to face a fight with himself which the rest of us do not encounter. This sometimes leads the excessively corpulent person to relax into laziness and slovenliness. An obese individual sometimes surprises us, however, by his ambition and immaculateness.
But such a man or woman almost always combines decided mental tendencies with his alimentiveness.
Enjoys Doing Favors.
- The habits which endear the fat person to everyone and make us forget his faults are his never-failing hospitality, kindness when you are in trouble, his calming air of contentment, his tact, good nature and the real pleasure he seems to experience when doing you a favor.
His worst faults wreak upon him far greater penalties than fall upon those who a.s.sociate with him, something that can not be said of the faults of some other types.
Likes Melody.
- Simple, natural music is a favorite with fat people. Love songs, rollicking tunes and those full of melody are most popular with them. An easy-to-learn, easy-to-sing song is the one a fat man chooses when he names the next selection.
They like ragtime, jazz and music with a swing to it. Music the world over is most popular with fat races. The world"s greatest singers and most of its famous musicians have been fat or at least decidedly plump.
Goes to the Cabaret.
- The fat person will wiggle his toes, tap his fingers, swing his fork and nod his head by the hour with a rumbling jazz orchestra.
When the Alimentive is combined with some other type he will also enjoy other kinds of music but the pure Alimentive cares most for primal tunes and melodies.
Likes a Girly-Show.
- A pretty-girl show makes a hit with fat women as well as with fat men. Drop into the "Pa.s.sing Show" and note how many fat people are in the audience. Drop into a theater the next night where a tragedy is being enacted and see how few fat ones are there.
The One Made Sport Of.
- Fat people enjoy helping out the players, if the opportunity offers. All show people know this.
When one of those tricks is to be played from the foot-lights upon a member of the audience the girl who does it is always careful to select that circular gentleman down front. Let her try to mix up confetti or a toy balloon with a tall skinny man and the police would get a hurry call!
When we describe the bony type you will note how very different he is from our friend the fat man.
A Movie Fan.
- "The fat man"s theater" would be a fitting name for the movie houses of the country. Not that the fat man is the only type patronizing the cinema. The movies cover in one evening so many different kinds of human interests--news, cartoons, features and comedy--that every type finds upon the screen something to interest him.
But if you will do what we have done--stand at the doorway of the leading movie theaters of your city any evening and keep a record of the types that enter you will find the plump are as numerous as all the others combined.
Easy Entertainment.
- The reason for this is plain to all who are acquainted with Human a.n.a.lysis: the fat man wants everything the easiest possible way and the movie fulfils this requirement more fully than any other theatrical entertainment. He can drop in when he feels like it and there is no waiting for the show to start, for one thing.
This is a decided advantage to him, for fat people do not like to depend upon themselves for entertainment.
The Babies of the Race.
- The first stage in biological evolution was the stage in which the alimentary apparatus was developed. To a.s.similate nutriment was the first function of all life and is so still, since it is the princ.i.p.al requirement for self-preservation.
Being the first and most elemental of our five physiological systems the Alimentive--when it overtops the others--produces a more elemental, infantile nature. The pure Alimentive has rightly been called "the baby of the race." This accounts for many of the characteristics of the extremely fat person, including the fact that it is difficult for him to amuse himself.
He of all types likes most to be amused and very simple toys and activities are sufficient to do it.
Loves the Circus.
- A serious drama or "problem play" usually bores him but he seldom misses a circus.
The fat person expresses his immaturity also in that he likes to be petted, made over and looked after.
- Like the infant he demands food first. Almost the only time a fat man loses his temper is when he has been deprived of his food. The next demand on his list is sleep, another characteristic of the immature.
Give a fat man "three squares" a day and plenty of sleep in a comfortable bed, and he will walk off with the prize for good humor three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. Next to sleep he demands warm clothing in winter and steam heat when the wintry winds blow.
Fat People at the Beach.