For example, there is the seasoned trans-atlantic tourist who, on the occasion of a certain terrifically stormy passage, was for three days the only person on board excepting the captain who never missed a single meal.  You find him everywhere; there must be a million or more of him; and he loves to talk about it, and he does.

But even more frequently encountered is the veteran drummer—­no, beg pardon, the veteran district sales manager, for there aren’t any drummers any more, or even any traveling salesmen; but instead we have district sales managers featuring strong selling points—­I say, even more frequently encountered is the veteran district sales manager, wearing a gravy-colored waistcoat if a tasty dresser, or a waistcoat of a nongravy-colored or contrasting shade if careless, who craves to tell strangers what, customarily, he eats for breakfast.

I made it a point to study the proportions and hearken to the disclosures of such a one, and if he carried his stomach in a hanging-garden effect, with terraces rippling down and flying buttresses and all; and if he had a pasty, unhealthy complexion or an apoplectic tint to his skin I said to myself that thenceforth I should apply the reverse English to his favorite matutinal prescription.

CHAPTER IX

Adventure of The Fallen Egg

So, having mapped out my campaign of attack against my fat, I rose one morning from my berth in the sleeping car and I dressed; and firmly clutching my new-formed resolution to prevent its escape, I made my way to the dining car and sat down and gave my order to the affable honor graduate of Tuskegee Institute who graciously deigned to wait on me.

Now, theretofore, for so far back as I remembered, breakfast had been my heartiest meal of the entire day, with perhaps two exceptions—­luncheon and dinner.  Precedent inclined me toward ordering about as many pieces of sliced banana as would be required to button a fairly tall woman’s princess frock all the way down her back, with plenty of sugar and cream, and likewise a large porringer of some standard glutinous cereal, to be followed by sausages with buckwheat cakes and a few odd kickshaws and comfits in the way of strawberry preserves and hot buttered toast and coffee that was half cream, and first one thing and then another.  But Spartanlike I put temptation sternly behind me and told the officiating collegian to bring me plain boiled prunes, coffee with hot milk and saccharin tablets, dry toast and one dropped egg.

The prunes and the coffee were according to specifications, although, lacking the customary cream and three lumps of sugar, the coffee was in the nature of a profound disappointment.  But a superficial inquiry convinced me that the egg was not properly a dropped egg at all.

Here was a fallen egg, if I ever saw one.  I was filled with pity for it—­poor, forsaken, abandoned thing, with none to speak a kind word for it!  And probably more sinned against than sinning, too.  Perhaps there was hereditary influences to be reckoned with.  Perhaps its producer had been incubator raised, with no mother to guide her and only the Standard Oil Company for a foster parent.  And what would a New Jersey corporation know about raising a hen?