FAT WOMEN FOR MARKET
BUDDING ADIPOSITY URGED TO ITS FULLNESS.
THE GENTLEMAN WHO TOLD THE SECRETS OF PEACE HOLLOW AND SOME MELANCHOLY INCIDENTS OF HIS BUSINESS.
(Originally published in The New York Times, March 6, 1887.)
"The fact is fat women ain't appreciated — nohow," said Mr. Keever moodily. "I've ben raisen 'em for the market for the last twenty years, and I guess I orter know," he continued half to himself.
There was silence for a moment while the spectacled old gentleman from Bangor recovered from his astonishment.
"Raising them for the market did you say?" he asked.
"Of course," returned the first speaker, pulling out a card.
It was morning in the Dime Museum. The Madagascar paroquet swore at intervals over his cracker; the two-tongued lady ran her lingual phenomenon out and in like an Arizona rattlesnake at practice; the Brazilian mandril ceased his desultory chat with a little sapajou from Honduras whom he had learned to love better than life itself, and no sound was heard save the gentle snore of the African lizard "from—the—centre of Sa-ha-ra—and—don't—you—forget—it," which slumbered just as obliviously, just as peacefully as it ever had from its reptilian boyhood, in the jurassic period, far back in the gray dawnlight of worldly time.
The Bangor gentleman took the card and read it. It ran:
______________________________________ The card was passed and the little coterie, urged by a common curiosity, edged a little closer to Mr. Keever, as he leaned against Big Ethel's foot.
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¦ JONATHAN KEEVER, ¦
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¦ DEVELOPER OF FAT WOMEN, ¦
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¦ Peace Hollow, Westchester County, Pa. ¦
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¦ N. B.—Telegraph Allen's Junction three days ¦
¦ before starting.
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"May seem a queer business to you," he began, "but it's very simple. Back in '65 I was a Thompsonian doctor in Indiana, but I frequently, in my practice, made little trips in science that were a trifle outside o' the book. I lost four or five patients, mebbe, but that's no more than the regulars do when they're investigatin', an' I got facts in return that paid me ten times over. 'Mong other things I found out that it's just as easy to make a woman weigh 500 pounds as it is to pull her up to 250. At that time fat women of any size was unknown. Wasn't a woman in the business could go over 400 without lead in her petticoats. But now! Just look at that," said he proudly, as he patted the kid-enveloped ham which Ethel called her foot. "She's only six-fifty just now, but wait till I'm done with her and you won't know her. Will they, Ethel?" said he with some enthusiasm. Ethel expressed her confidence by a coy, girl-ish smile which measured half a foot or less.
"But—a—what is the process?" asked the old gentleman.
"As far as the physiological side goes it's my own secret," said Keever, "an' I could get a heap o' money for it if I'd sell. Provided you've got a first-class subject to work with, all you want is to take care of the surroundin' conditions an' give her my tonic. I lit on a little combination of two vegetable extracts that had a wonderful effect in stimulatin' the liver. Not only that, but it strengthened the nerves o' the digestive system and abnormally developed the villi and the receptaculum chyli, which secretes all the nutritious part of the food, particklerly the oleic an' stearic acids, which makes all the fat. Soon as I got hold of it I saw fortune ahead o' me, an' I didn't see wrong. My graduates is wuth from forty to a hundred a week, an' I git a steady royalty on every one of them, because there ain't no failures. You needn't think, though, that every woman can be a star in this business any more than in any other. Fat women is like poets. They're born, not made," and Mr. Keever chuckled in a low, shrewd, Third-avenue sort of a way.
"How do you treat them in addition to the tonic?" asked the gentleman from Bangor.
"Well, the fust necessity is a sluggish circulation. There must be nothin' around them to excite. The fust thing I looked out for after I made up my mind was a proper locality, and after some travelin' I picked out a little valley in Pennsylvania and bought a quarter section. It was jest the place. No railroads, no whistles, no telegraphs, no nothin'. There was plenty o' cows an' clover an' sunrises an' sunsets. The birds an' the bees made all the noise, an' the vines clumb up the veranda in a slow sort of way that was very soothin'. I begun with one girl, with her parents' consent, though I had to take them, too, an' they gat fat without any pay, but I succeeded with her wonderful. Then I branched out an' advertised, an' I've had my hands and the house full ever since."
"Do you undertake to develop any subject?"
"Not by no means. Subjects, that is the best kind o' subjects, is hard to find. I like to get 'em when they're children if I can. They must be healthy and not nervous. Your sleepy kind of a girl is the best kind to work with. The lazier she is, the better. She don't want to have any curiosity about anything. Curiosity is what keeps most women thin. Then she's got to be sentimental in her disposition. Sentiment is a great developer. Then again she must be good-natured and laugh easily. 'Laugh an' grow fat' means a good deal more in my business than it does on the cover of a comic almanac. Why, I had to discharge one of the best men I ever had just on that account."
"How was that?"
"His name was Charles, and he came from Portsmouth, N.H. I hired him first as a farm laborer, but he was so speedy that I put him into the 'Escort Department.' That's five or six men I have to take the subjects to walk around the garden. I won't have nobody in my employ, you know, who ain't a smiler. They must have a natural smile and help make the place cheerful. The trouble with Charlie was he couldn't smile. The corners of his mouth drawed down naturally; heredity done it, I spose, an' he couldn't smile. I spoke to him about it, an' he done his best, but when he'd figgered out what he thought was a pretty good smile, he came an' showed it to me an' I really felt sorry for him. It was awful. 'Twould have stopped a Waterbury clock. So I told him to let it go an' try an' talk pleasant to 'em, but 'twas no use. Fat women is the most sympathetic things in the world. They seen Charlie goin' around like a Westchester County Hamlet, an' they began to worry an' wonder about his unhappiness, which was dead agin rules. So I told him that Fairbanks and him couldn't agree and we had to part company. 'Twas a pity though. He know'd his business to a dot."
"Do you give your subjects any book education?"
"I give 'em what education they need. They all read, of course, but I have to be very particler as to what they read. Love, as I was tellin' you, is a great help, provided it's kept within imaginary limits. I don't let 'em read anything sensational, because that would make 'em nervous an' quicken the circulation. Henry James is my best holt. Henry James to me is the boss of 'em all. Why, if you could see me plant one of my pets out on the porch in the sunshine shadder, with one of James's books in her lap, it would do you good. She'll read for a while, say fifteen minutes, then her eyelids'll slip down, the book'll settle down in her lap an' she'll sleep like a baby for an hour. Then she'll come to herself, read a few pages more, an' quietly slip off again inter dreams. I tell you, Sir, when I've looked at a row of 'em, all peaceful, all happy, all sleepin' quietly through a hot afternoon, I've wished I could meet Mr. James an' tell him what a blessin' he is to his time."
"I should think they would want to get married."
"No. I educate 'em out of that. I tell 'em that ambition is a bigger thing than matrimony, and after they pass the four-hundred line an' begin to take a pride in their business, they never think of marryin'. There's exceptions, though. I raised a girl from Connecticut, Alice was her name, and was proud of her. She was a regular delight to me. Had a perfect genius for the business. She came to me in May, '82, rated at one-eighty, and when I put her in one of my shows in September, '84, she was six hundred and ten and still a risin'. Well, she traveled for a few months till she struck Memphis, Tenn., and what did she do but fall flat in love with a skeleton gentleman from Ohio. He was a splendid skeleton. Best I ever saw. Looked like a lot of slate pencils tied together with thread. I left 'em together there and came up to the farm for a couple o' months. The minute I got back to Memphis I know'd somethin' was wrong. He was afraid to look me in the face, and I knew in a minute he'd been cuttin' up some monkey shines. I clapped him on the scales and I was staggered. The villian weighed 90 pounds and his contract with me was for 65 at the outside. I looked to Alice an' she commenced to cry. The long and short of it was she'd fallen in love with him, they'd got engaged while I was away, and she'd been giving him part of her tonic. I discharged him, bit it was no go. She commenced to pine and fall away, an', rather than lose her, I had to let 'em get married, and it ruined 'em both. They had to leave the business. She don't weigh over 200 today, and he's close to that figure himself. They throwed away fame and fortune and are nothin' but small farmers over in Indiana. No! Matrimony is death to a career in my business."
"Do you ever meet with any losses?"
"Oh, yes, there's always circumstances comin' up that you can't forsee. Only last Winter I lost $200 in less'n ten minutes."
"How was that?"
"Well, ye see, I've got a pretty handsome place in Peace Holler and, as all classes comes to me for treatment, I shipped over a parlor set an' screens an' things, just as fine as they have anywhere. That parlor, in fact, was my pride. Well, one forenoon, Big Phoebe, she's in St. Louis now, was settin' in a strong armchair an' one of the maids was talkin' with her, when a mouse run out of the fireplace onto the carpet in front of her. Well, it's a mystery to me, an' I told her so pretty plain, what harm a 2-ounce mouse could do to a 700-pound woman, but that didn't make any difference to Phoebe. She just gives a yell and hops up on the sofa. Down goes one end of it in splinters. She takes one step, down goes the other end, and she wrecks a gilt chair with her left, while she hops on an inlaid table with her right. Bang goes the table and another chair. That mouse sat perfectly still, scared to death, I spose, while Phoebe smashed round the walls of the room, leavin' nothin' but kindlin' wood behind her, and then fainted dead away agin an ebony cabinet that cost $75 at the factory, and wasn't worth 75 cents after receivin' her willowy form. I'd a given her $50 in a minit not to faint, but I lost a parlor set and two months' time with her, and she insists to this day that she's an object of sympathy."
"Well, well," gasped the Bangor gentleman, while a slight suspicion left its footprint on several brows.
"Then there was Maria, from Rochester," continued Mr. Keever, rapidly, "but I always felt sorry for her. Maria was a good girl, and her whole heart was in the business, but she was awful sensitive, and I sent her out with some misgivin's. She went to Savannah and it didn't agree with her. She got to ailin' and got to worryin', and by the time she'd lost 40 or so she was downright sick. She took to bed an' lay there two months, an' when she got up she was a sight. Didn't weigh an ounce over 400. She braced up, though, an' went back on the platform in New Orleans and kept a stiff upper lip, but all the time she was thinkin' of what she had been and, most of all, of her beard which had all fallen' out durin' the fever. Well, she got sad and mopin', began to cry at times and think of Peace Holler an' my wife, who was the only mother she'd ever known. It wasn't long before she fell ill again, went to St. Mary's Hospital, and in three weeks' time poor Maria was beyond all trouble. I was telegraphed for an' I went down and they gave me a little note from her askin' that I take her back to Peace Holler an' bury her under the maple tree on the hill behind the house where she'd passed many an' many a day as a child.
"I wasn't the man to refuse such a request, an' I made all the preparations to send the poor girl back. There was a good deal of difficulty, though. Maria wasn't no feather-weight, and I found out that the railroad company would charge me double A rate and no end of extras if they knew. I thought it all over, an' as it wouldn't make no difference to her I jest painted 'Fragile. Handle with care' on the big box and way-billed Maria as statuary, together with another box which contained an organ. It was a sad trip for me, for my wife thought as much of Maria as she did of her own children; but when I got to my journey's end an' stood on the platform at the junction, I felt a great deal worse. You see the two boxes was the same size, and the freight agent had made a mistake, and all I had to take home to my wife was a parlor organ, boxed for shippin', while Maria had gone on in the freight car the Lord knows where. I rushed to the telegraph window and tried to wire the train, but the operator had gone, an' next morning there came news of a collision, a lot of passengers killed, and the freight car knocked into junk. Well, mebbe I did wrong, but a parlor organ is a parlor organ in these times, and I knowed the railroad company would take care of Maria, so I shipped the box home an' have never told my wife a word about it to this day. But I tell you, gentlemen, there's never an evenin' or a Sabbath afternoon, when we're all settin' around that melodious organ and listenin' to those beautiful Methodist tunes, that I don't think of Maria and all her lovable qualities as a woman an' hope that she's as happy in her afterlife as she made every one of us in goin'."
There was a gentle sympathetic silence over the little group as Mr. Keever finished. He put his handkerchief to his eyes and stroked his beard gently with his other hand for a moment and then walked quietly away. The old gentleman from Bangor looked into the distance somewhat doubtfully; the four-legged mulatto baby gooed and gurgled as it balanced, in its mother's lap, on its mahogany tetrapod, and the listeners looked at each other in something like sad perplexity. A boy went by, one of those preternatural boys who feed the monkeys in dime museums, and somebody asked him, pointing across the room to Keever: "Who is that man?"
"Him!" said the boy with a grin. "Him! Why, he was the Albino gentleman up to the 1st of the month, but now he's going to Kalamazoo to be the armless wonder."
(Thanks to Karl Neidershuh for uncovering this lost tale.)