“No glanders in our family, Doc,” I said.
The consulting physician held up his forefinger within three inches of my nose. “Look at my finger,” he commanded.
“Did you ever try Pears’—” I began; but he went on with his test rapidly.
“Now look across the bay. At my finger. Across the bay. At my finger. At my finger. Across the bay. Across the bay. At my finger. Across the bay.” This for about three minutes.
He explained that this was a test of the action of the brain. It seemed easy to me. I never once mistook his finger for the bay. I’ll bet that if he had used the phrases: “Gaze, as it were, unpreoccupied, outward—or rather laterally—in the direction of the horizon, underlaid, so to speak, with the adjacent fluid inlet,” and “Now, returning—or rather, in a manner, withdrawing your attention, bestow it upon my upraised digit”—I’ll bet, I say, that Henry James himself could have passed the examination.
After asking me if I had ever had a grand uncle with curvature of the spine or a cousin with swelled ankles, the two doctors retired to the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath tub for their consultation. I ate an apple, and gazed first at my finger and then across the bay.
The doctors came out looking grave. More: they looked tombstones and Tennessee-papers-please-copy. They wrote out a diet list to which I was to be restricted. It had everything that I had ever heard of to eat on it, except snails. And I never eat a snail unless it overtakes me and bites me first.
“You must follow this diet strictly,” said the doctors.
“I’d follow it a mile if I could get one-tenth of what’s on it,” I answered.
“Of next importance,” they went on, “is outdoor air and exercise. And here is a prescription that will be of great benefit to you.”