A KINDERGARTEN OF ONE.
Keeping away from Callahan's and from the sinister harvest which was often reaped there, had a depressing effect on my income. For a comparatively long time I lived on a few dollars, which came to me from outstanding loans, now determinedly collected. I learned then that if one keeps away from Callahan's and places like it, one can subsist on a remarkably small income. As it had been with me, it was always a case of "getting it easy and spending it easy."
My expenses became the object of much thinking and figuring. So much for room rent, so much for meals, including Bill's fare, and so much for shaves and incidentals were estimated at the lowest minimum and so as to last the longest until something should turn up. This something did not fail to turn up.
When the funds became dangerously low, I bethought myself of some of my swell friends, who had often evinced a desire to have me "train" them or keep them in condition. These propositions had been so frequent as to make me think that to be rich included being rich in ailments.
Some wanted me to make them thin, others desired more flesh to cover their bones, and they all came to me, I being such an authority on anatomy and physiology!
I communicated with many of these ailing swells and ere long made a fairly good living by my physical culture lessons. There is a heavy cloud on my conscience that on my balance-sheet a score of offenses are recorded against me in connection with the furtherance of my physical culture system. A frank confession is good for the soul, and I might as well confess right here that, only too frequently, I prescribed the identically same course for fat and lean.
This calling of mine was not without humor. I remember a "patient" who was troubled with too much embonpoint. He did not believe in the prescriptions of his physician, but rather preferred the physical culture system of "Professor" Kildare. He was a man of much weight in public affairs and in flesh. About 250 pounds in the flesh, if I remember right.
He lived in the immediate neighborhood of Madison Square, and for a long succession of many mornings a select audience, including several news-boys, a few policemen and myself, had the edifying spectacle of seeing these 250 absolutely-refusing-to-melt pounds chase around the square like mad at 5 A.M.
I do not think it did him very much harm and it did the audience an awful lot of good, if you will take laughter as an indication of increasing health.
No fear of want or need threatening me, I gave myself completely up to peeping into the better life. I fairly revelled in my new experience, and dreams by day and night were my only territory.