This doctor prescribed exercise, as had all the others whom I had ever
consulted. As it was the consensus of medical opinion that I needed
exercise, I thought I would take it scientifically and in the right
manner; so I employed a qualified _masseur_ to give me massage treatment.
I thought passive exercise preferable to the active kind. This fellow,
however, did not try to please me--he insisted on rubbing up when I wanted
him to rub down, and _vice versa_--so I discharged him. Next I took up
swimming and rowing, but one day I had a narrow escape from drowning, so
that gave me a distaste for these things.

It seemed that I had about exhausted all the physical culture methods that
might be considered genteel and in my class. Perhaps it may be more
literally correct to say that I had formed a nodding acquaintance with the
most of them.

[Illustration: Informed me I had psychasthenia anorexia.]

One day, as I was wondering what new thing I could annex, the postman
handed me a letter. No psychology about this, for the postman comes
every day and I get letters nearly every day. But this letter contained an
advertisement of an outfit that was guaranteed to increase the stature.
Now I was tall enough, but I had a new vanity that I felt like humoring
just then. When I occasionally appeared at social functions I wanted to be
designated as "the tall, handsome bachelor." I thought that if I went
through a course of exercises stretching my ligaments and tendons it would
also conduce to health and strength. Growing tall ought to be healthy, all
right, I thought. So I got the apparatus--a fiendish-looking thing,
composed of ropes, straps, buckles, and pulleys--and I set it up in an
unused shed. I had taken exercises with it a few days and liked it
first-rate. One evening, about dusk, I went out to take my usual "turn"
and had just put on a head-gear suspended from a rope. This by a sort of
hanging act was to develop and elongate the muscles of the neck. Just as I
swung myself loose, two burly policemen hopped over the fence from the
alley, cut the rope, and were dragging me off to the lock-up in spite of
my pleadings and protests. I tried to assure them that I was not a
lunatic and that I was not bent on suicide. "Shure, thot's what they all
say!" was the cold comfort they gave me. As luck would have it, I at last
discovered that I had in my pocket some of the directions that went with
this new trouble-maker. I prevailed upon th