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.