Another corpulent person is thus lamented:—
Here lies the body of Thomas Dollman,
A vastly fat, though not a very tall man;
Full twenty stone he weighed, yet I am told,
His captain thought him worth his weight in gold:
Grim Death, who ne'er to nobody shows favour,
Hurried him off for all his good behaviour;
Regardless of his weight, he bundled him away,
'Fore any one "Jack Robinson" could say.
A moral lesson is given in the following:—
But why he grew so fat i' th' waist,
Now mark ye the true reason,
When other people used to fast,
He feasted in that season.
So now, alas! hath cruel Death
Laid him in his sepulchre.
The son of a Dean, a man of very spare habit, expressing to the son of a Bishop his astonishment at the great difference of the size of their fathers, the Bishop being very fat, he explained the reason in the following extempore parody of the old song:—
There's a difference between
A Bishop and a Dean,
And I'll tell you the reason why:
A Dean cannot dish up
A dinner like a Bishop,
To feed such a fat son as I.
[Count Boruwlaski, the Polish Dwarf.]
One of the best attested cases of dwarfish existence on record is that of Joseph Boruwlaski, the Polish dwarf, who was the delight of our grandfathers, and who, after the age of seventy, suddenly found himself able with his hand to raise the latch of a door which up to that period he had always raised with a stick. How many inches he grew is not recorded, but the fact of his growth is sufficiently astonishing, and is only paradoxical so long as we continue to hold the general opinion that "men do not grow after reaching maturity," whereas, in strict language, we must admit that they grow as long as they live, but do not normally surpass the standard of maturity; growth continues, but only to supply the waste, not enough, as in childhood, to supply the waste and furnish surplus for the increase.