One Third Off by Irvin S. Cobb — Read

It has been my personal observation, viewing the matter at close range, / that nearly always fat, like old age or a thief in the dark, steals upon / one unawares. I take my own case. As a youngster and on through my teens / and into my early twenties -- ah, those romping elfin twenties! -- I was, in / outline, what might be termed dwindly, not to say slimmish. Those who have / known me in my latter years might be loath to believe it, but one of my / boyhood nick-names -- I had several, and none of them was complimentary but / all of them were graphic -- was Bonesy. At sixteen, by striping myself in / alternate whites and blacks, I could have hired out for a surveyor's rod. / At twenty-one I measured six feet the long way, and if only mine had been / a hook nose I should have cast a shadow like a shepherd's crook.

My avocation in life was such as to induce slenderness. I was the city / staff of a small-town daily paper, and what with dodging round gathering / up items about people to write for the paper and then dodging round to / avoid personal contact with the people I had written the items about for / the paper, I was kept pretty constantly upon the go. In our part of the / country in those days the leading citizens were prone to take offense at / some of the things that were said of them in the public prints and given / to expressing their sense of annoyance forcibly. When a high-spirited / Southern gentleman, regarding whom something of a disagreeable nature had / appeared in the news columns, entered the editorial sanctum without / knocking, wearing upon his crimsoned face an expression of forthright / irritation and with his right hand stealing back under his coat skirt, it / was time for the offending reporter to emulate the common example of the / native white-throated nut-hatch and either flit thence rapidly or hunt a / hole.