Looking for new symptoms.
The reader will readily imagine how hard labor served me. My muscles were as sore as if I had been the recipient of a thorough mauling. I tried to stand the work as long as I could, for I thought it would, like the other remedies prescribed for me, “do me good.” I had been there a week (it seemed to me an eternity) when, one morning, I was so sore and stiff that I could not get out of bed. One of the other hired men came to my rescue and gave me a thorough rubbing with liniment, after which I was able to crawl down to breakfast. The old skinflint of a farmer then had the audacity to discharge me, saying that he “didn’t want no dood from the city monkeyin’ around in the way, nohow.”
CHAPTER VI.
NEW SYMPTOMS AND THE PURSUIT OF HEALTH.
The pursuit of health is like the pursuit of happiness in that you do not always know when you have either. It may furthermore be likened to chasing a will-o’-the-wisp that ever keeps a few safe paces ahead of you. The thought that I had to keep busy at something calculated to promote my health was a habit that I could not easily relinquish. So now I began to read up and practice physical culture—which I had always spoken of as physical torture. I had read that any puny, warped little body could, by proper and persistent training, be made sturdy and strong. I had no desire to grow big, ugly muscles that look like knots, but I was effeminate enough to think that a touch of physical culture might enhance my beauty as well as make me healthier.
Calisthenics being an esthetic exercise, I began practicing it with the usual enthusiasm that marked the beginning of all my undertakings. Before I had made scarcely any progress I decided that fencing would be of greater value to me, it being an exercise requiring precision of movements, thus making it of much value in the development of brain as well as of muscle. Just about the time my interest in fencing was keyed up to the highest pitch, the friend with whom I was practicing accidentally prodded me a little on the shoulder. This scared me into abandoning the exercise as it seemed fraught with danger.