Daily Express.
Sir:
A far more crying need than that of the Chaperone in these modern days is for a Supervisor of the middle-aged man who has allowed himself to get "out of shape."
At Healthward Ho (formerly Graveney Court), in Worcestershire, where Doctor Alexander Twist, the well-known American physician and physical culture expert, ministers to such cases, wonders have been achieved by means of simple fare and mild, but regular, exercise.
It is the boast of Doctor Twist that he makes New Men for Old.
I am, sir,
Yrs. etc.
Vigilant.
These letters and many others, though bearing a pleasing variety of signatures, proceeded in fact from a single gifted pen—that of Doctor Twist himself—and among that class of the public which consistently does itself too well when the gong goes and yet is never wholly free from wistful aspirations toward a better liver they had created a scattered but quite satisfactory interest in Healthward Ho. Clients had enrolled themselves on the doctor's books, and now, on this summer afternoon, he was enabled to look down from his study window at a group of no fewer than eleven of them, skipping with skipping ropes under the eye of his able and conscientious assistant, ex-Sergeant-Major Flannery.
Sherlock Holmes—and even, on one of his bright days, Doctor Watson—could have told at a glance which of those muffled figures was Mr. Flannery. He was the only one who went in instead of out at the waist-line. All the others were well up in the class of man whom Julius Cæsar once expressed a desire to have about him. And pre-eminent among them in stoutness, dampness, and general misery was Mr. Lester Carmody, of Rudge Hall.
The fact that Mr. Carmody was by several degrees the most unhappy-looking member of this little band of martyrs was due to his distress, unlike that of his fellow-sufferers, being mental as well as physical. He was allowing his mind, for the hundredth time, to dwell on the paralyzing cost of these hygienic proceedings.
Thirty guineas a week, thought Mr. Carmody as he bounded up and down. Four pound ten a day.... Three shillings and ninepence an hour.... Three solid farthings a minute.... To meditate on these figures was like turning a sword in his heart. For Lester Carmody loved money as he loved nothing else in this world except a good dinner.