(_A Forecast_)
In the spring of 1913 St. John Skinner came back from Africa, after
spending nine or ten years somewhere near the Zambesi. He travelled up
to Waterloo by the electric train, and the three very stout men who were
in the same first-class compartment seemed to look at him with surprise.
On arriving at his hotel he pushed his way through a crowd of fat
persons in the hall. Then he changed his clothes, and went round to his
Club to dine.
The dining-room was filled with members of extraordinary obesity, all
eating heartily. In the fat features of one of them he thought he
recognised a once familiar face. "Round," said he, "how are you?"
The stout man stopped eating, and gazed at him anxiously. "Why," he
murmured, after a while, in the soft voice that comes from folds of fat,
"it must be Skinner. My dear fellow, what is the matter with you? Have
you had a fever?"
"I'm all right," answered the other; "what makes you think I've been
ill?"
"Ill, man!" said Round, "why you've wasted away to nothing. You're a
perfect skeleton."
"If it's a question of bulk," remarked Skinner, "I'm much more
surprised. You've grown so stout, every fellow in the Club seems so
stout, everyone I've seen is as fat as--as--as you are."
"Heavens!" exclaimed Round, "you don't mean to say I've been putting on
more flesh? I'm the light weight of the Club. I only weigh sixteen
stone. No, no, you're chaffing, or you judge by your own figure."
"Not a bit," said the other; "you and I used to weigh about the same.
What on earth has happened to you all?"
"Well," said Round, "perhaps you're right. It's very much what the
doctors say. It's the fashionable complaint, motorobesity. Sit down, and
dine with me, and I'll tell you what the idea is. You see, it's like
this. For ten years or so everybody who could afford a motor of some
sort has had one. We've all had one. Not to have a motor has been simply
ridiculous, if not disreputable. So everybody has ridden about all day
in the fresh air, never had any exercise, and got an enormous appetite.
Besides, in the summer we've always been drinking beer to wash down the
dust, and in the winter soup, or spirits, or something to warm us. My
dear fellow, you can't think what an appetite motoring gives you. I had
an enormous steak for my lunch at Winchester to-day, and a great lump of
plum cake with my tea at Aldershot, and my aunt, the General's wife,
made me bring a bag of biscuits to eat on the way up, and yet I'm so
hungry now that I should feel quite uncomfortable if the thirst those
biscuits, and the dust, gave me didn't make me almost forget it. I
suppose everyone is really getting fat. One notices it when one does
happen to see a thin fellow like you. Why, in all the Clubs they've had
to have new arm-chairs, because the old ones were too narrow. However,
I've talked enough about motoring. So glad to see you again, old chap.
Of course you'll get a motor as soon as possible."
"Well," said Skinner, "I rather think I shall buy a horse."
"My dear fellow," cried Round, "what an idea! Horse-riding is such
awfully bad form. Besides, you can't go any pace. Look at me. I wouldn't
get on a horse, and be shaken to pieces."
"I should think not," said Skinner, "but I think I should prefer that to
motorobesity."
* * * * *
An advertisement in _The Motor_ quotes the testimony of a gentleman from
Moreton-in-the-Marsh, who states that he has run a certain car "nearly
412,500 miles in four months, and is more than pleased with it." As this
works out (on a basis of twenty-four hours' running _per diem_) at about
143 miles per hour, we have pleasure in asking what the police are doing
in Moreton-in-the-Marsh and its vicinity.
* * * * *
Noticing an advertisement of a book entitled "The Complete Motorist," an
angry opponent of the new method of locomotion writes to suggest that
the companion volume, "The Complete Pedestrian," had better be written
at once before it becomes impossible to find an entire specimen.
* * * * *