and are thick and strong, walking will not hurt your
feet. You must walk or work until you perspire freely, every day of the
week. Of course, you are in delicate health, with little endurance, but,
as you have told me that you are willing to do anything, you are to work
hard at something six or seven hours every day."

4. You must rise early in the morning, and retire late at night. Much
sleep fattens people.

5. The terrible corset you have on, which compresses the center of the
body, making you look a great deal fatter than you really are, must be
taken off, and you must have a corset which any dress maker can fit to
you--a corset for the lower part of the abdomen, which will raise this
great mass and support it.

"This is all the advice I have to give you at present. At first you will
lose half a pound a day. In the first three months you will lose from
twenty to thirty pounds. In six months, forty pounds. You will
constantly improve in health, get over this excessive emotion, and be
much stronger. Every one knows that a very fat horse weighing 1,200
pounds, can be quickly reduced to 1,000 pounds with great improvement to
activity and health. It is still easier with a human being. That you may
know exactly what is being done, I wish you to be weighed; write the
figures in your memorandum, and one week from now, when you come again,
weigh yourself and tell me how much you have lost."

I happened to be out of the city and did not see her until her second
visit, two weeks from our last meeting. It was plain when she entered
that already her system was being toned up, and when we were again in my
private office, she said:

"I have lost six and a half pounds; not quite as much as you told me,
but I am delighted, though nearly starved. I have done exactly as you
prescribed, and shall continue to if it kills me. You must be very
careful not to make any mistakes, for I shall do just as you say. At
first the thirst was dreadful. I thought I could not bear it. But now I
have very little trouble with that."

About four months after our first meeting this young woman brought a
handsome young man with her, and after a pleasant chat, she said to me:

"We are engaged; but I have told my friend that I shall not consent to
become his wife until I have a decent shape. When I came to you I
weighed 209 pounds; I now weigh 163 pounds. I am ten times as strong,
active, and healthy as I was then, and I have made up my mind, for my