* * * * *

(To DR. R. R.)

“January 10, 19—.

“Could not get away, you conscientious old Medicus, because of the strange accidents and holiday doings of the Whirlpool Colony at the Bluffs!

“Well, well!  I read your last with infinite amusement.  You are in a fair way to have enlightenment borne in upon you without leaving your surgery, or at least travelling farther than your substantial gig will take you.

“Meanwhile I have had what should be a crushing blow to my vanity, and in analyzing it I’ve made an important discovery.  One night last week I was sitting quietly in the card room at the Dibdin Club, awaiting my whist mates (for here at least one may be reasonably sure of finding a group with bibliographic interests in common, and the pleasures of a non-commercial game of cards), when I heard a voice, one of a group outside, belonging to a wholesome, smooth-faced young fellow, with good tastes and instincts, say:—­

“’I don’t know what happened to the old boy when he took that unheard-of vacation of his last fall, or where he went, but one thing’s very sure, since his return Cortright’s grown pudgy and he’s waked bang up.  Wonder if he’s finished that Colonial History, that’s to be his monument, he’s been working on all his life, or if he’s fallen in love?’

“’If he’d fall in love, he might stand more chance of finishing his history,’ replied a graybeard friend in deep didactic tones; ’he has material in plenty, but no vital stimulus for focussing his work.’

“I gave an unpremeditated laugh that dwindled to a chuckle, as if it were produced by a choking process.  Two heads appeared a second at the doorway of the room they had thought empty, and then vanished!

“When I came home I sat a long while before my den fireplace thinking.  They were right in two things, though not in the falling in love—­that was done thirty-five years ago once and for all.  I wondered if I had grown pudgy, dreadful word; stout carries a certain dignity, but pudgy suggests bunchy, wabbling flesh.  I’ve noticed my gloves go on lingeringly, clinging at the joints, but I read that to mean rheumatism!

“That night I stood before the mirror and studied my face as I unbuttoned my vest and loosened my shirt band at the neck.  Suddenly I experienced great relief.  For several months past I have felt a strange asphyxiation and a vertigo sensation when wearing formal clothes of any kind, enjoying complete comfort only in the loose neckcloth and wrapper of my private hours.  I had thought of asking medical advice, but having acquired a distrust of general physic in my youth, and hoping you might come down, I put it off.

“Unfasten your own top button, and now prepare to laugh—­Martin Cortright is not threatened with apoplexy or heart failure, he’s grown pudgy, and his clothes are all too small!  Yet but for that boy’s good-tempered ridicule he might not have discovered it.