These attempts numbered about two a year.  Between times I ate as I wanted to and drank as I pleased.  Things ran along until the first of January, 1911.  I knew I was getting fatter, for my tailor told me so and my belts and old clothes all proved it.  Still, I didn’t bother much.  I thought I was lingering round about two hundred and thirty-five—­too much, of course; but I got away with it pretty well, except in hot weather and when I went up in the high mountains, and I was reasonably content.  I was fat, all right.  My waist was only two inches smaller than my chest and that meant my waist was forty-four inches in girth.  As a matter of fact, being scant five feet ten and a half, I was bigger than a house; but I deluded myself with that stuff about my broad shoulders and my deep chest, and thought it didn’t show.  It did show, of course.  I was a fat man—­a big fat man—­carrying forty pounds or more of excess weight.

I had dieted and quit; exercised and quit; gone on the waterwagon and fallen off; had fussed round a good deal, spending a lot of money in the attempt, and I was getting fatter all the time.  I hated to admit that fact.  I tried to fool myself into the conviction that I wasn’t getting any larger—­and all the time I knew I was.  I even went so far as to stop getting on the scales; and when anybody—­as almost everybody did—­said, “Why, you’re getting bigger, ain’t you?” I always replied:  “No, I think not.  I stick along about two hundred and thirty-five pounds.”

A year ago last summer I went up into the mountains, where I usually go for my fun.  I had noticed a shortness of breath and a wheeziness in previous summers, and had felt my heart pounding pretty hard; but that summer I noticed these things acutely.  I couldn’t get any air to breathe.  My heart pounded like a pneumatic riveter.  Any little exercise tired me; and when in the lowlands in hot weather I was the perspiring marvel and the most uncomfortable as well as the sloppiest person you ever saw.  It was fierce!

I was doing a good deal of walking in those days—­had to burn up the fuel I was taking into my body.  Also, I noticed it was mighty hard to keep awake after dinner unless I got out into the air and kept moving.  I felt well enough and the doctors said I was organically all right.  I kept informed on those points—­but I was fat!  Also, though I lied to myself, I knew I was getting fatter.

CHAPTER III

FACING THE TISSUE

On New Year’s Day, 1911, I weighed myself.  I don’t know why, for I hadn’t been on a scale for two or three years.  I set the weight at two hundred and thirty-five and it bounded up like a rubber ball; so I shoved it along to two hundred and forty and it still stayed up in the air.  When I got a balance I found I weighed two hundred and forty-seven pounds.  I was amazed!  Also, I was scared; for it instantly occurred to me that if I had gone up to two hundred and forty-seven in two or three years from two hundred and thirty-five I should keep on going up if my manner of living didn’t change—­and that presently I should weigh three hundred!