Doc obeyed. Klinker picked up a "sneaker" from the floor and hurled it
with deadly precision at a weight-and-pulley across the room.
"There's your medicine, Doc!"
Orange-stick in mouth, he went around like a museum guide, introducing
the beloved apparatus to the visitor under its true names and uses, the
chest-weights, dumb-bells and Indian clubs, flying-rings, a
rowing-machine, the horizontal and parallel bars, the punching-bag and
trapeze. Klinker lingered over the ceremonial; it was plain that the
gymnasier was very dear to him. In fact, he loved everything pertaining
to bodily exercise and manly sport; he caressed a boxing-glove as he
never caressed a lady's hand; the smell of witch-hazel on a hard bare
limb was more titillating to him than any intoxicant. The introduction
over, Klinker sat down tenderly on the polished seat of the
rowing-machine, and addressed Doctor Queed, who stood with an academic
arm thrown gingerly over the horizontal bar.
"There's your medicine, Doe. And if you don't take it--well, it may be
the long good-by for yours before the flowers bloom again."
"How do you mean, Mr. Klinker--there is my medicine?"
"I mean, you need half an hour to an hour's hardest kind of work right
here every day, reg'lar as meals."
Queed started as though he had been stung. He cleared his throat
nervously.
"No doubt that would be beneficial--in a sense, but I cannot afford to
take the time from My Book--"
"That's where you got it dead wrong. You can't afford not to take the
time. Any doctor'll tell you the same as me, that you'll never finish
your book at all at the clip you're hitting now. You'll go with nervous
prostration, and it'll wipe you out like a fly. Why, Doc," said Klinker,
impressively, "you don't realize the kind of life you're leading--all
indoors and sedentary and working twenty hours a day. I come in pretty
late some nights, but I never come so late that there ain't a light
under your door. A man can't stand it, I tell you, playing both ends
against the middle that away. You got to pull up, or it's out the door
feet first for you."
Queed said uneasily: "One important fact escapes you, Mr. Klinker. I
shall never let matters progress so far. When I feel my health giving
way--"
"Needn't finish--heard it all before. They think they're going to stop
in time, but they never do. Old prostration catches 'em first every
crack. You think an hour a day exercise would be kind of a waste, ain't
that right? Kind of a dead loss off'n your book and studies?"
"I certainly do feel--"
"Well, you're wrong. Listen here. Don't you feel some days as if mebbe
you could do better writing and harder writing if only you didn't feel
so mean?"
"Well ... I will frankly confess that sometimes--"
"Didn't I know it! Do you know what, Doc? If you knocked out a little
time for reg'lar exercise, you'd find when bedtime came, that you'd done
better work than you ever did before."
Queed was silent. He had the most logical mind in the world, and now at
last Klinker had produced an argument that appealed to his reason.
"I'll put it to you as a promise," said Klinker, eyeing him earnestly.
"One hour a day exercise, and you do more work in twenty-four hours than
you're doing now, besides feelin' one hundred per cent better all the
time."