costume, as of a tiger or a very ferocious and yet at times purring cat, beautifully dressed, as in our children’s storybooks, a kind of tiger in collar and boots.  He was so lithe, silent, cat-like in his tread.  In his hard, clear, gray animal eyes was that swift, incisive, restless, searching glance which sometimes troubles us in the presence of animals.  It was hard to believe that he was all of sixty, as I had been told.  He looked the very well-preserved man of fifty or less.  The short trimmed mustache and goatee which he wore were gray and added to his grand air.  His hair, cut a close pompadour, the ends of his heavy eyebrow hairs turned upward, gave him a still more distinguished air.  He looked very virile, very intelligent, very indifferent, intolerant and even threatening.

“Well,” he exclaimed on sight, “you wish to see me?”

I gave him my name.

“Yes, that’s so.  Your brother spoke to me about you.  Well, take a seat.  You will be looked after.”

He walked off, and after an hour or so I was still waiting, for what I scarcely knew—­a room, something to eat possibly, some one to speak a friendly word to me, but no one did.

While I was waiting in this rather nondescript antechamber, hung with hats, caps, riding whips and gauntlets, I had an opportunity to study some of the men with whom presumably I was to live for a number of weeks.  It was between two and three in the afternoon, and many of them were idling about in pairs or threes, talking, reading, all in rather commonplace athletic costumes—­soft woolen shirts, knee trousers, stockings and running or walking shoes.  They were in the main evidently of the so-called learned professions or the arts—­doctors, lawyers, preachers, actors, writers, with a goodly sprinkling of merchants, manufacturers and young and middle-aged society men, as well as politicians and monied idlers, generally a little the worse for their pleasures or weaknesses.  A distinguished judge of one of the superior courts of New York and an actor known everywhere in the English-speaking world were instantly recognized by me.  Others, as I was subsequently informed, were related by birth or achievement to some one fact or another of public significance.  The reason for the presence of so many people rather above than under the average in intellect lay, as I came to believe later, in their ability or that of some one connected with them to sincerely appreciate or to at least be amused and benefited by the somewhat different theory of physical repair which the lord of the manor had invented, or for which at least he had become famous.

I have remarked that I was not inclined to be impressed.  Sanitariums with their isms and theories did not appeal to me.  However, as I was waiting here an incident occurred which stuck in my mind.  A smart conveyance drove up, occupied by a singularly lean and haughty-looking individual, who, after looking about him, expecting some one to come out to him no doubt, clambered cautiously out, and after seeing that his various grips and one trunk were properly deposited on the gravel square outside, paid and feed his driver, then walked in and remarked: