“Here’s a Bit of Fat for You!”
cried a learned Professor of Obesity, at the same time tossing over to us an accurate account of the dimensions of one Thomas Hardy Kirman, whose case Mr. Pettigrew submitted to the Royal Society in 1833. This boy, before he was quite twelve years of age, measured five feet one, and weighed 198 lbs. He was 45½ inches round the waist, 18½ round the calf, and 19 across the shoulders. His obesity commenced at six years of age, at which time he fractured his thigh and was confined six weeks.
“Why didn’t they let him out to hire,” said Mr. Cavil, “to the Expositors of Mesmerism; he must have been made to stick pins into. Think of a human creature being turned into a pincushion! It fills all my flesh with a sense of glass splinters and Whitechapel blunts.”
Here our young acquaintance, Charles Hookeywalker, with delicate tenderness, proposed a relief to the feelings of the speaker by volunteering a sonnet.
“Another sonnet!” cried Mr. Cavil, “worse and worse, I hate sonnets.”
But the subject in this especial instance was voted to contain a saving grace, for it was addressed to the Princess Royal, while yet she is