OBESITY AN AID TO BUSINESS.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2293, 5 January 1900, Page 6

OBESITY AN AID TO BUSINESS.

That extreme corpulency has its business advantages it is quite impossible to deuy. Like the m< " l with the wooden leg who hired himself out to a gardener and made holes in the earth as he walked about ready for the insertion of bulbs, the ingenious fat man frequently turns his stoutness to profitable account. Arthur Orton.of Tichborne fame, has been for some time the attraction to a modest tobacc<-uist's shop. Probably half of his customers come in not so much in search of the soothing weed, but to satisfy ttieir curiosity with a peep at the prodigy behind the counter. One of the most active fat men on record is an American gentleman of some considerable weight in his own, or any other, country, and who represents in England a Transatlantic firm of cycle makers. Only twenty-three years of age, he weighs thirty six stone and is six feet and a half in height. With the name of the wheel which he is liteially '• pushing "—for he is an expert cyclistwritten across his ample chest, he does big business in the taking of orders. And on a popular path he recently rode a " flying quarter " in one minute seven seconds. Chancing on a very fat inan in a provincial town which he was " working," a well-known patent medicine retailer snapped him up as an attraction. And to-day, as he drives the panacea-seller's smart waggonette, a crowd readily collects wherever a stop is made to p.. on the ample proportions of the Jehu. Fat men are said to be almost invariably « gafe investments." particularly on account of the evenness of their tempers. In Austria the man who loees both hands in an accident can claim the whole of his life insurance money, on the ground that he has lost the means of maintaining himself. t # # •• Pay me the six-and-eightpence you owe me." said an Irish attorney to one of his clients. " For what ?" " For the opinion you had of me." " Faith, I never had any opinion of you in all my life.