Since thus we turn, my own, my Colleen Bawn, Why not unite before our breath is gone?

It is the judgment ever of the sage That happiness is in the average; What better equipoise than you and I, What more a.s.sured? O, sweetheart, let us try!"

The Fat Woman was impressed but, more than that, and better in ten thousand ways, she was delighted that the man she realized she loved had finally dared to express himself, though in this odd, sentimental way.

She thought much and then--there is shade of correction added--she wrote this letter:

"Dear Jim:--I understand your poem. I won't fool a bit. I care for you, Jim, as you care for me. But we will be a joke if we get married now. Can't you see that, Jim? Can't we get more like each other before we get married? We have both saved quite a lot of money. Oh, Jim, if you'll try to get thicker, I'll try to get thinner.

"Lovingly, "SARAH."

The Ossified Man read that letter and went out and walked up and down the streets for hours. He was the happiest and most perplexed man in all the big city. His heart at least wasn't ossified.

He remembered a professor who had studied him and whom he had heard say to those about that there was no occasion for the continued ossification in such a subject, provided the stomach was all right.

"I'll go to that old professor," he said, "and I'll put the case to his giblets in a way to make him salty round the eyes. And I'll write all about it to my little girl, G.o.d bless 'er!"

So his "little girl" got the letter and cried largely and with vast resources and, as we say, "braced up." "He is good, my Jim," she said to herself; "and I'll meet him half way, G.o.d bless him! I know a professor too, and I'll see him."

So each went to a professor.

Professor McFlush was the doctor whose portrait accompanied an advertis.e.m.e.nt regularly in the Sunday papers, and whom the Ossified Man had in mind. He didn't hesitate an instant after an examination of what there was of his patient. "I'll cure you in no time if you follow my directions," he declared. "My Sulphuretted Tablets will knock out the ossification and as for the rest it's all diet."

"What diet?" asked the Ossified Man.

"Hash!" roared the doctor. "Do you drink much?"

"Naw," said the Ossified Man.

"Well, you've got to--hash--hash and porter. Hash is fattening, the potatoes in it does it. Porter is fattening, the malt in it does it.

Them and my tablets together will do the business--seventeen tablets a day--dollar a bottle, thirty-four in a bottle. Five tablets before breakfast, and for breakfast hash and two bottles of porter. Dinner the same; supper the same. Anything else you want eat or drink all day long.

Last two tablets just before you go to bed. Get your prescriptions filled here. Get your porter over at Johnson's wholesale grocery, I've made an arrangement with him. Ten dollars. Report weekly. Good day."

And the Ossified Man took up his task for Love's sake.

It was to Professor Sloc.u.m that the Fat Woman went. Professor Sloc.u.m was brisk and small but he had a way with the ladies.

The Fat Woman believed in him implicitly from the moment they met.

"Do you eat much?" was the first query of the Professor.

"Yes sir, considerable."

"Do you drink much?"

"Yes sir, some ale, and water most all the time."

"Madam, I am astonished! Keep on with that diet and you'll weigh half a ton before you die, and you'll die within six months."

The Fat Woman gasped and turned pallid. She was influenced not only by love but by acute alarm.

The Professor looked upon her benignly.

"Madam," he said, "I can save you. My condensed Food Tablets and my Spirituelle Waters will do the business. The tablets will afford you sufficient sustenance for existence without affording any element for the increase of adipose tissue, while my Spirituelle Waters will gratify your thirst--the more you drink of them the better--while, at the same time, they will exercise an influence of their own. Get your tablets here at this office--fifty cents a hundred--Spirituelle Waters here too--quart bottles, twenty-five cents a bottle. Prescription: ten tablets and one bottle of the water to a meal; another bottle of the Waters before retiring. Drink all the Spirituelle Water you want during the day. Ten dollars. Report fortnightly. Good afternoon."

The professors knew their business. There could be no doubt of that. Not with any sunburst, so to speak, but steadily and day by day, the Ossified Man increased in flexibility and tissue and the Fat Woman decreased in fat.

There came a day when the Museum manager observed the change and sent for the Ossified Man.

"What's the matter, Jim?" asked the potentate.

"Nothing that I know of," was the answer.

"Do you weigh any more than you did, Jim?"

"About twenty-five pounds, I believe," was the hesitating answer.

"I'll see you in my Office at two o'clock this afternoon."

Then the Fat Woman was sent for and questioned.

"How much do you weigh, Sarah?" was the first query.

"Six hundred and twenty-three pounds, sir," was the truthful answer.

"Huh!" said the manager. "Sixty pounds gone Sarah! I'll see you in my Office at two o'clock this afternoon."

An hour later the Ossified Man and the Fat Woman were engaged in earnest conversation. After a pause the Fat Woman remarked thoughtfully:

"Jim, we're going to get the g. b."

"Looks that way," said the Ossified Man.

"Do you care much?"

"Nope," said the Ossified Man, "only I wish we each could have gathered in our fifty per for another six months or so."

"Well, I don't care!" said the Fat Woman, lovingly and desperately.

"I've saved up about six thousand and you've got about five, and the three or so can go."

"Suits me," said the Ossified Man.

The meeting in the manager's office that afternoon was spirited but good-natured.

"Heard you'd got stuck on each other and were trying to size up together," said the manager.

"About the size of it," said the Ossified Man.

"Well, it strikes me that there are two sizes yet," said the manager, "but that doesn't matter. You are knocking out two of my attractions.

I'll have to let you both go at the end of the week."

"All right," said the Ossified Man, good-naturedly. "But," he added, as a second thought struck him, "say, Sarah is going one way and I'm going the other and there is no telling how far we may happen to pa.s.s. It might happen that we might want a job again. Now when I come back as the Fat Man, and she as the Ossified Woman, will you take us on?"