Likewise, I invited his consideration of the fact, which was not to be gainsaid either, that many men very much less elaborated than I in girth customarily ate very much more than I did.  I recalled, offhand, sundry conspicuous examples of this sort.  I believe I mentioned one or two such.  For instance, now, there was Mr. William Jennings Bryan.  The Bryan appetite, as I remarked to the doctor, is one of the chief landmarks of Mr. Bryan’s home city of Lincoln, Nebraska.  They take the sight-seeing tourists around to have a look at it, the first thing.

To observe Mr. Bryan breakfasting on the morning when a national Democratic convention is in session is a sight worth seeing.  A double order of cantaloupes on the half shell, a derby hat full of oatmeal, a rosary of sausages, and about as many flapjacks as would be required to tessellate the floor of a fair-sized reception hall is nothing at all for him.  And when he has concluded his meal he gets briskly up and strolls around to the convention hall and makes a better speech and a longer one and a louder pile than anybody.  Naturally, time, the insatiable remodeler, has worked some outward changes in Mr. Bryan since the brave old days of the cross of gold.  His hair, chafed by the constant pressure of the halo, has retreated up and ever up his scalp until the forehead extends clear over and down upon the sunset slope.  The little fine wrinkles are thickly smocked at the corners of the eagle eyes that flashed so fiercely at the cringing plutocrats.

But his bearing is just as graceful and his voice just as silvery and as strong as when in ’96 he advocated free silver to save the race, or when he advocated anti-expansion in the Philippines, or government ownership of the railroads, or a policy of nonpreparedness for war when Germany first began acting up—­Grover Cleveland Bergdoll felt the same way about it and so did Ma Bergdoll;—­and I, for one, have no doubt that Mr. Bryan will be just as supple, mentally and physically, three years hence when, if he runs true to form, he will be advocating yet another of that series of those immemorial Jeffersonian principles of the fathers, which he thinks up, to order, right out of his own head, when a campaign impends.  Mr. Bryan knows how to play the political game—­none better; but he certainly does have a large discard.  That, however, is aside from the main issue.

The point I sought to bring out there in the office of my friend Doctor So-and-so was that Mr. Bryan, to my knowledge, ate what he craved and all that he craved, yet did not become obese.  When the occasion demanded he could be amply bellicose, but the accent was not upon the first two syllables.

I cited similar cases further to buttress my position.  I told him that almost the skinniest human being I ever knew had been one of the largest eaters.  I was speaking now of John Wesley Bass, the champion raw-egg eater of Massac Precinct, whose triumphant career knew not pause or discomfiture until one day at the McCracken County fair when suddenly tragedy dire impended.