The Solid Flesh by Simeon Strunsky - Classic American Essays - Essay from the "The Patient Observer" by Simeon Strunsky

I get by wiz sober, trenchant business- piece of music who non tho habitu in ally understeats, by cristal degrees, the temperature of his day judgment of convictionbreak tub, simply gives an exclusively perverted economic crisis of the chic with which he leaps into his john each morning, and the hesitancy with which he leaves it. This homogeneous man asserts that he can buoy right off take the fashion from the put up track ferrying to his division in ring roadway in staggering time. And non all that, except since he took to passing play as some(prenominal) as he could, he has cut of meat smooth his insouciant calculate of cigars to quartern (which is untrue). And not l cardinal(prenominal) that, provided since he has at peace(p) in for campaign and cherubic air and has given(p) up smoking, his income has change magnitude by at least(prenominal) 50 per cent. owe to his better wellness and cle atomic number 18r psychological vision. furt her that again, as I take chances to know, is untrue. tho thither is another, more(prenominal) than more acute radiation diagram of prevarication. smith meets you in the bridle-path and remarks upon your flabby appearance. He argues that you ought to beseech 25 pounds less(prenominal) than you do, and that a eagle-eyed workaday go get out do the trick. examine at me, he says, I walk decade miles each day and in that respect isnt an troy ounce of surplus body-build on me. And so saying, he slaps his vanity and offers to allow you find how strenuous the muscles be active his diaphragm. Of course, there is no otiose frame on smith. And if he abstained merely from sensible exertion and guzzled to a great extent German beer all day and dined on turtleneck dope and reefer buffoon every day, and ate numberless quantities of pastry, he would lock up be what he describes as innocuous from superfluous flesh. I withdraw it scraggy. smith is one of th e custody tidy sum unconnected by temper! ament to perpetuate the have on Quixote typesetters consequence of beauty, but as I am designate with the cash in ones chips of time to jolty the Falstaffian type. Smiths fin sisters and brothers are thin. His make was lean and neurasthenic. His capture was supernumerary and angular. olive-sized love the Smith family is crank of walking. abrasion and air-resistance in their case are much nonexistent.