“That’s unnecessary,” he said. “Get yourselves a pair of three-pound dumb-bells and use them a certain length of time every day.”
So we are constantly on the lookout for a dumb-bell shop, but there seems to be a regrettable lack of such establishments in mid-ocean.
The Gentleman from Louisiana says he is going to join the Foreign Legion if they’ll take him. He is only seventy years old.
“But age makes no difference to a man like I,” says he. “I exercise and keep hard. All my friends are hard and tough. Why, one of my friends, an undertaker, always carries a razor in his boot.”
Presumably this bird never allows psychological depression in his business.
The Gentleman from Louisiana continues:
“I’ve got a reputation for hardness, but I’m only hard when I know I’m right. I used such hard language once that they injected me from a committee. I was state senator then. But in all the time I held office I never talked more than two minutes.”
We expressed polite regret that he was not a state senator still. And we asked him to have a lemonade.
“No, thank you. Even the softest drinks have a peculiar effect on me. They make my toes stick together.”
We guaranteed to pry those members apart again after he had quenched his thirst, but he would not take a chance.