And fat robs the tragic ending of its depression. The sight of a normally-built woman expiring of heartbreak, or any other favorite operatic death, would be most distressing; but the spectacle of a four-hundred pound consumptive, on a thickly-padded canvas-and-steel rock, breathing forth her everlasting last, like a moping walrus on a cake of ice—such a spectacle does not disturb us in the least, for we realize that all she needs is a fan.
Indeed, the fattest never die. After a prima donna is no longer able to manoeuver over the operatic stage, she toddles along the carpet of the concert platform, tugging her train like a double-expansion freight-engine, while the audience applauds from sheer amazement. She is an immense success—even people sitting behind posts can see her.
Thin singers perish and are forgotten (there never were any, anyhow); but the gloriously fat ones sing on forever. When Judgment Day comes and the angel blows his trumpet, he will have to toot it with Wagnerian fury plus Straussian blatancy if he hopes to be heard above the aigretted and tiaraed dodos who are still on the yell.