fact that I had compressed myself in carrying an
enormous weight upon my head during one of
my exhibitions. Whatever was the immediate
cause, I gradually grew stouter for ten years,
until I weighed nearly fifty stone. My size was
nearly three yards round the body; my legs
measured a yard round the thigh; and a common suit
of clothes cost me twenty pounds."

"Have you ever heard of Daniel Lambert?"
I asked, again interrupting my host.

"Of course I have," he answered; "he was a
running footman."

The coolness of this reply effectually silenced
me, and I allowed the story to proceed without
any further interruption.

"My excessive and increasing corpulence,"
he continued, "filled me with alarm, and I at
last placed myself under strict rules of diet.
This required a vast deal of sustained resolution,
for almost from the beginning of my change in
size, I had been afflicted with a voracious appetite.
I thought little of devouring at one meal
as much as sixteen pounds of meat and bread,
and there were times when my appetite was even
more ravenous. My drinking was also in
proportion to my eating, although I was never
intoxicated. All this had to be changed, and I
therefore copied the plan of Louis Cornaro, of
whom you may have heard. It was a hard
struggle, but I persevered. As I thought it
prudent not to make a total alteration in my
diet suddenly, I confined myself to a pint of ale
a day, and used animal food sparingly. This
method I soon found to answer to my satisfaction,
for I felt easier and lighter, and my spirits became
less oppressed. During the next two months, I
struck off half my drink, and more than half my
animal food. I next gave up malt liquor, and
confined myself entirely to water for about a
year, at the end of which period I was able to do
without any fluid except what I took in the way
of medicine. I next avoided cheese, then butter,
and at last was able to turn my back upon
animal food, and to sustain myself entirely upon
pudding made of sea-biscuit. I allowed myself
very little sleep, generally going to bed at eight
o'clock in the evening, sometimes even earlier,
and rising about one o'clock in the morning. My
voice, which I had entirely lost for several years,
came back to me clear and strong; my flesh
became firm, my complexion a good colour; and I
reduced my weight at least forty stone."

"Did you ever weigh yourself, to test the truth
of these figures?"  I asked.

"Never. Prejudiced by a commonly prevailing
superstition, which, of course, I see the folly
of now, I never suffered myself to be put in the
scales, either during the state of my extreme
corpulence, or after my reduction."

"Why did you. subject yourself to such very
strict rules of diet?" I inquired: "stricter
even than those which governed your teacher,
Cornaro?"

"Because I was ten years older than Cornaro
was when he began his regimen, and I therefore
thought, on that account, a more severe and
abstemious course was necessary. I was greatly
influenced by Dr. Cheyne's opinion that Cornaro
would probably have lived longer, had his regimen
been more strict. Dr. Cheyne was right, as
I have tested by experiment, and I have been
right in following the advice of Dr. Cheyne. For
more than a hundred years I have been fed upon
a pudding, the composition of which you may be
curious to learn, especially as you show a
tendency to become stout, and are evidently not in
very sound health. Take three pints of skimmed
milk, boil them and pour them on one pound of
the best sea-biscuit, broken into pieces; do this
overnight, and then leave the ingredients to stand
together until the following morning, when you
may add two eggs. This compound, being boiled
in a cloth about the space of an hour, will
become a pudding of sufficient consistency to be
cut with a knife. No matter what may have
been the season—what festivities were going on
—what temptations there were to a little
self-indulgence—I allowed myself only a pound and
a half of this pudding at four or five o'clock in
the morning, as my breakfast, and the same
quantity at noon, as my dinner. What is the
result? At the age of a hundred and ninety——"

"I beg your pardon," I said, "you told me
you were only one hundred and seventy-six."

"Did I?" he answered; " well, say one hundred
and seventy-six, then—we'll not quarrel about
fourteen years—at this age I am able to live
cheerfully without company in what, as I before
remarked, you contemptuously style 'a desert.'
I am active and vigorous, and in full possession
of more than my proper faculties. I am able, at
times, to pick out colours with my eyes closed,
and to read a book with my 'fingers' ends.
Sometimes I can walk in my sleep with even more
security and speed than when I am awake: which
I look upon as a proof that my system of diet is
correct."

My host's story might probably have continued
for several hours longer, as I really had not
sufficient determination to stop it, if we had not
been interrupted at this point by the appearance
of a third person at the door of the hut. The
new comer was a man about forty, and, if dress
were any sign of quality, I might have thought
that I had been entertained by the servant in the
absence of the master. I was not, however, left
long in suspense as to the relation in which the
two islanders stood to each other, for my ragged
host immediately addressed the new comer in a
loud authoritative tone:

"Pampered menial! Take off that dandy coat,
and blow the fire."

The new comer obeyed this rude command
rather slowly and sullenly, muttering something
about not being so fond of rags as some people
were.

"Silence!" again shouted my ragged host.
"If Crusoe and Friday quarrel in private, let
them preserve a certain decency before strangers."