Explore "One Third Off" by Irvin S. Cobb on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
That night on the sleeper a splendid resolution sprouted within me. Next / morning when we arrived home it was ready and ripe for plucking. I would / trim myself down to more lithesome proportions and I would start the job / right away. It did not occur to me that cutting down my daily consumption / of provender might prove helpful to the success of the proposed / undertaking. Or if it did occur to me I put the idea sternly from me, for / I was by way of being a robust trencherman. I had joyed in the pleasures / of the table, and I had written copiously of those joys, and I now / declined to recant of my faith or to abate my indulgences.
All this talk which I had heard about balanced rations went in at one ear / and out at the other. I knew what a balanced ration was. I stowed one / aboard three times daily -- at morn, again at noon and once more at / nightfall. A balanced ration was one which, being eaten, did not pull you / over on your face; one which you could poise properly if only you leaned / well back, upon arising from the table, and placed the two hands, with a / gentle lifting motion, just under the overhang of the main cargo hold.