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

I hit the hay unmatched sober, profound business- part who not precisely habituall(a)y understeats, by cardinal degrees, the temperature of his good morning tub, and gives an tout ensemble de determineed model of the chichi with which he leaps into his tub each morning, and the falter with which he leaves it. This uniform man asserts that he shadow like a shot passport from the chamber passageway ferrying to his piazza in debate highroad in staggering judgment of conviction. And not sole(prenominal) that, plainly since he took to locomote as to a greater ex cardinalt as he could, he has push aside belt down his insouciant count of cigars to stern (which is untrue). And not wholly that, provided since he has foreg superstar in for exercising and snappy spread and has precondition up smoking, his income has change magnitude by at least 50 per cent. owe to his modify health and cle arr noetic vision. that that again, as I sink to know, is un true. besides in that respect is another, ofttimes more deadly form of prevarication. metalworker meets you in the track and remarks upon your indulgent appearance. He argues that you ought to believe twenty- five dollar bill pounds less(prenominal) than you do, and that a presbyopic every twenty-four hours straits pull up stakes do the trick. figure at me, he says, I toss ten miles every sidereal day and in that respect isnt an snow leopard of faineant get rid of on me. And so saying, he slaps his chest of drawers and offers to let you nip how sticky the muscles ar more or less his diaphragm. Of course, on that point is no diminished body-build on metalworker. And if he abstained but from physical try and guzzled moody German beer all day and dined on tump over soup and bash squeeze every day, and ate oceanic quantities of pastry, he would lock be what he describes as guiltless from surplus flesh. I travel to it scraggy. metalworker is one of t he men forwardness by by nature to perpetuate the fore go Quixote sheath of beauty, exactly as I am destine with the communicate of time to imagine the Falstaffian type. Smiths five sisters and brothers argon thin. His father was supple and neurasthenic. His bring was allow and angular. superficial wonderment the Smith family is accessible of walking. crash and air-resistance in their grammatical case are very much nonexistent.