That night I went to a hotel in the city, and said to the clerk: "What I need is absolute rest and exercise. Can you give me a room with one of

those tall folding beds in it, and a relay of bellboys to work it up and down while I rest?"

The clerk rubbed a speck¹ off one of his finger nails and glanced sidewise at a tall man in a white hat sitting in the lobby. That man came over and

asked me politely if I had seen the shrubbery at the west entrance. I had not, so he showed it to me and then looked me over.

"I thought you had 'em," he said, not unkindly, "but I guess you're all right. You'd better go see a doctor, old man."

A week afterward² my doctor tested my blood pressure again without the preliminary stimulant³. He looked to me a little less like Napoleon. And

his socks were of a shade, of tan that did not appeal to me.

"What you need," he decided⁴, "is sea air and companionship."

"Would a mermaid⁵ --" I began; but he slipped on his professional manner.

"I myself," he said, "will take you to the Hotel Bonair off the coast of Long Island and see that you get in good shape. It is a quiet, comfortable resort where you will soon recuperate⁶."

The Hotel Bonair proved to be a nine-hundred-room fashionable hostelry on an island off the main shore. Everybody who did not dress for dinner was

shoved into a side dining-room and given only a terrapin⁷ and champagne⁸ table d'hote. The bay was a great stamping ground for wealthy yachtsmen.

The Corsair anchored there the day we arrived. I saw Mr. Morgan standing⁹ on deck eating a cheese sandwich and gazing longingly¹⁰ at the hotel. Still, it was a very inexpensive place. Nobody could afford to pay their prices. When you went away you simply left your baggage, stole a skiff,and beat it for the mainland in the night.

When I had been there one day I got a pad of monogrammed telegraph blanks at the clerk's desk and began to wire to all my friends for get-away

money. My doctor and I played one game of croquet on the golf links and went to sleep on the lawn.

When we got back to town a thought seemed to occur to him suddenly. "By

the way," he asked, "how do you feel?"

"Relieved of very much," I replied.

Now a consulting physician is different. He isn't exactly sure whether he is to be paid or not, and this uncertainty¹¹ insures you either the most

careful or the most careless attention. My doctor took me to see a consulting physician. He made a poor guess and gave me careful attention. I liked him immensely. He put me through some coordination¹² exercises.

"Have you a pain in the back of your head?" he asked. I told him I had not.

"Shut your eyes," he ordered, "put your feet close together, and jump backward as far as you can."

I always was a good backward jumper with my eyes shut, so I obeyed. My head struck the edge of the bathroom door, which had been left open and

was only three feet away. The doctor was very sorry. He had overlooked the fact that the door was open. He closed it.

"Now touch your nose with your right forefinger¹³," he said.

"Where is it?" I asked.

"On your face," said he.

"I mean my right forefinger," I explained.

"Oh, excuse me," said he. He reopened the bathroom door, and I took my finger out of the crack of it.

After I had performed the marvellous digito-nasal feat¹⁵ I said:

"I do not wish to deceive you as to symptoms, Doctor; I really have something like a pain in the back of my head." He ignored the symptom and

examined my heart carefully with a latest-popular-air-penny-in-the-slot ear-trumpet. I felt like a ballad¹⁶.

"Now," he said, "gallop¹⁷ like a horse for about five minutes around the room."

I gave the best imitation I could of a disqualified Percheron being led out of Madison Square Garden. Then, without dropping in a penny, he listened to my chest again.

"No glanders in our family, Doc," I said.

The consulting physician held up his forefinger within three inches of my nose. "Look at my finger," he commanded.

"Did you ever try Pears' --" I began; but he went on with his test rapidly.

"Now look across the bay. At my finger. Across the bay. At my finger. At my finger. Across the bay. Across the bay. At my finger. Across the

bay." This for about three minutes.

He explained that this was a test of the action of the brain. It seemed easy to me. I never once mistook his finger for the bay. I'll bet that

if he had used the phrases: "Gaze, as it were, unpreoccupied, outward -- or rather laterally¹⁸ -- in the direction of the horizon, underlaid, so to

speak, with the adjacent fluid inlet," and "Now, returning -- or rather, in a manner, withdrawing your attention, bestow¹⁹ it upon my upraised digit¹⁴"

-- I'll bet, I say, that Henry James himself could have passed the exami nation.

After asking me if I had ever had a grand uncle with curvature of the spine²⁰ or a cousin with swelled²¹ ankles, the two doctors retired²² to the

bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath tub for their consultation²³. I ate an apple, and gazed first at my finger and then across the bay.

The doctors came out looking grave. More: they looked tombstones and Tennessee-papers-please-copy. They wrote out a diet list to which I was

to be restricted. It had everything that I had ever heard of to eat on it, except snails²⁴. And I never eat a snail²⁵ unless it overtakes me and

bites me first.

"You must follow this diet strictly," said the doctors.

"I'd follow it a mile if I could get one-tenth of what's on it," I answered.

"Of next importance," they went on, "is outdoor air and exercise. And here is a prescription²⁶ that will be of great benefit to you."

Then all of us took something. They took their hats, and I took my departure.

I went to a druggist and showed him the prescription.

"It will be $2.87 for an ounce bottle," he said.

"Will you give me a piece of your wrapping cord?" said I.

I made a hole in the prescription, ran the cord through it, tied it around my neck, and tucked it inside. All of us have a little superstition²⁷, and

mine runs to a confidence in amulets²⁸.

Of course there was nothing the matter with me, but I was very ill. I couldn't work, sleep, eat, or bowl. The only way I could get any sympathy

was to go without shaving for four days. Even then somebody would say: "Old man, you look as hardy²⁹ as a pine knot. Been up for a jaunt³⁰ in the

Maine woods, eh?"

Then, suddenly, I remembered that I must have outdoor air and exercise. So I went down South to John's. John is an approximate relative by

verdict of a preacher standing with a little book in his hands in a bower³¹ of chrysanthemums³² while a hundred thousand people looked on. John has a country house seven miles from Pineville. It is at an altitude and on the Blue Ridge³³ Mountains in a state too dignified³⁴ to be dragged into this

controversy³⁵. John is mica³⁶, which is more valuable and clearer than gold.