One Third Off by Irvin S. Cobb — Read

Well, I made up my mind, having tried violent exercise in the gymnasium, / coupled with violent language in the steam room, and having found neither / or both had been of the least avail in trimming down my proportions, but / on the contrary had augmented them to the extent of nearly ten pounds, / live weight, that I would let well enough alone. If 'twere my ordained / fate to be fat -- why, then so be it; I'd be fatly fatalistic and go on / through life undulating and rippling. If an all-wise Providence meant to / call me to the estate of being the bulkiest writing man using the English / language for a vehicle, then let Hilaire Belloc look to his laurels and / Gilbert K. Chesterton to his unholsterings. There was one consolation: / Thank heavens the championship would remain in America!

The years go marching by in ordered processional. A great war bursts and / for a space endures. In our own land prohibition is nationally enacted and / women's suffrage comes to be, and Irving Berlin, reading the signs of the / times, decides to write The Blue Laws Blues. Fashions of thought change; / other fashions, also. A girl who was born without hips or eyebrows and who / in childhood was regarded as a freak, now finds herself, at the age of / eighteen, exactly in the mode, thus proving that all things come to those / who wait. Czecho-Slovakia is discovered. The American forces spent three / days taking Château-Thierry and three years trying to learn to pronounce / it. Ireland undertakes to settle her ancient problem on the basis of / self-extermination. Several rich retail profiteers die, the approval being / hearty and general, and on arriving at heaven experience great difficulty / in passing through the Needle's Eye, or tradesmen's entrance. Somebody / tells Henry Ford about what some high priests did in Jerusalem nearly two / thousand years ago and in the first flush of his startled indignation he / becomes violently anti-Semitic. General Pershing returns from the / battlefields of Europe universally acclaimed a model of military / efficiency and wearing so many medals that alongside him John Philip / Sousa, by contrast, looks absolutely nude. His friends project him into / the political arena and the result is summed in a phrase -- "Lafayette, he / ain't there! " Unavailing efforts are made by a rebellious and unreconciled / few of us to find a presidential candidate willing to run on a platform of / but four planks, namely: Wines, ales, liquors and cigars. Harding wins, / Scattering second; Cox also ran: slogan: "He Kept Us Out of McAdoo."