HE shuts the windows, and shuts the doors, and then he lies in his bed
and snores, and breathes old air that is stale and flat—the kind of air
that would kill a cat. He says next day: “I am feeling tough; I’ll have
to visit old Dr. Guff, and buy a pint of his pale pink pills, or I shall
harbor some fatal ills.”
He fills his system with steaks and pies, and never indulges in
exercise. He eats and drinks of the market’s best, until the buttons fly
off his vest; he’s grown so mighty of breadth and girth that when he
gambols he shakes the earth. “I’ll see Doc Faker,” he says; “that’s
flat; I’ll get his dope for reducing fat. Doc Faker says he can make me
gaunt, and let me eat all the stuff I want.”
He sits and mopes in his study chair, while others toil in the open air.
He quaffs iced drinks through the sultry day, electric fans on his
person play. “I feel despondent,” he murmurs low; “I lack the vim that I
used to know; my liver’s loose and my kidneys balk, and my knee joints
creak when I try to walk. I’ll call Doc Clinker and have him bring his
Compound Juice of the Flowers of Spring.”
His head is bald where the tresses grew in the long gone days when his
scalp was new. He won’t believe that the hair won’t grow where it lost
its grip in the long ago. He tries all manner of dope and drug; he buys
Hair Balm by the gallon jug; he reads the papers and almanacs for news
concerning the Mystic Wax which surely maketh the wool appear on heads
gone bare in the yesteryear.
The more he uses of patent dopes, the more he worries, the more he
mopes. And all he needs to be blithe and gay is just to throw his old
jugs away, to do some work, as his fathers toiled, to let in air that
has not been spoiled, to rest his stomach and work his thews, quit
pressing coat tails and shake his shoes. If Chucklehead and his tribe
did this, they’d soon find health, which is short for bliss; and old Doc
Faker and all his gang would close their offices and go hang.
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