"A most alluring picture," said the Doctor.
"It almost makes my head ache to think of it!" said the Idiot. "But to continue, this goes on all morning, and then when afternoon comes they hang a nice little hammock for me, filled with dainty sofa cushions, out under the trees, and as they gently swing me to and fro a charming creature from Wellesley or Vassar sits alongside of me and fans my fevered brow, driving away dull care, flies, and mosquitoes until twilight, when, after feeding me on more macaroons, washed down with copious libations of sparkling lemonade, a bevy of elfin maids sit around in a circle and sing 'My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean', while the aforesaid little widow comes now and then to brush my scalp-lock back from my brow with the aforesaid pink paddy."
"Oh, well, what of it?" interrupted the Doctor. "I've known many a stronger man than you made a fool of—"
"What of it?" demanded the Idiot. "What of it? There's a lot of it. Do you suppose for one minute that I am going to get well under those circumstances?"
"I wouldn't," said the Lawyer.
"Not on your faith in the Materia Medica!" cried the Idiot. "That headache would become immortal. As undying as a poet's fame. Life would become for me one blissful eternity of cerebellian suffering under those conditions. Rather that lose my job as the cynosure of all that lovely solicitude I'd hire a bellboy to come to my room in the morning with a croquet mallet and hammer my head until it split, if I couldn't get one in any more legitimate fashion.
"The quiet joy of lying off there with all those ministering angels about me, secretly enjoying the discomfiture of all the other men about the place—they nursing their wrath; their sisters, cousins, aunts, rich grandmothers, and best girls nursing me—get well? me? never, Doctor!
"But if, on the other hand, nobody came near me all day long save a horse marine of a landlady armed with a bottle of squills, with the request that I go to bed until I felt better, why then I'd be a well man in just seven and a half minutes, dancing the tango, and challenging all the rheumaticky old beaux about the place to a hundred yards' dash for the fifteenth turkey trot with the little widow at the Saturday night hop."
"Yes, I admit that there is such a thing as too much coddling," said the Doctor. "There are people who are inclined to hug their troubles, and for whom too much sympathy is a positive deterrent in the process of recuperation, but after all, my dear fellow, until we find something better the sanitarium must serve its purpose, and a great many people are unquestionably helped along by its beneficent operations."
"I haven't a doubt of that," said the Idiot, "and here's to them! Long may they wave! I quaff this pony of maple syrup to the health of the sanitariums of the land—but just the same, for the tired business man, and his name is not only Smith, but Legion, there should be some other kind of an institution where this coddling process is frowned upon."