Even as I meditated, however, I was advised, by many who saw that I was a stranger, to choose a partner, any partner, for medicine ball practice, for it might save me being taken or called by him.  I hastened so to do.  Even as we were assembling or beginning to practice, keeping two or three light medicine balls going between each pair, our host entered—­that iron man, that mount of brawn.  In his cowled dressing-gown he looked more like some great monk or fighting abbot of the medieval years than a trainer.  He walked to the center, hung up his cowl and revealed himself lithe and lion-like and costumed like ourselves.  But how much more attractive as he strode about, his legs lean and sturdy, his chest full, his arms powerful and graceful!  At once he seized a large leather-covered medicine ball, as had all the others, and calling a name to which responded a lean whiskerando with a semi-bald pate, thin legs and arms, and very much caricatured, I presume, by the wearing of trunks and sweater.  Taking his place opposite the host, he was immediately made the recipient of a volley of balls and brow-beating epithets.

“Hurry up now!  Faster!  Ah, come on!  Put the ball back to me!  Put the ball back!  Do you want to keep it all day?  Great God!  What are you standing there for?  What are you standing there for?  What do you think you’re doing—­drinking tea?  Come on!  I haven’t all morning for you alone.  Move!  Move, you ham!  You call yourself an editor!  Why, you couldn’t edit a handbill!  You can’t even throw a ball straight!  Throw it straight!  Throw it straight!  For Christ’s sake where do you think I am—­out in the office?  Throw it straight!  Hell!” and all the time one and another ball, grabbed from anywhere, for the floor was always littered with them, would be thrown in the victim’s direction, and before he could well appreciate what was happening to him he was being struck, once in the neck and again on the chest by the rapidly delivered six ounce air-filled balls, two of which at least he and the host were supposed to keep in constant motion between them.  Later, a ball striking him in the stomach, he emitted a weak “Ooph!” and laying his hands over the affected part ceased all effort.  At this the master of the situation only smirked on him leoninely and holding up a ball as if to throw it continued, “What’s the matter with you now?  Come on!  What do you want to stop for?  What do you want to stand there for?  You’re not hurt.  How do you expect to get anywhere if you can’t keep two silly little balls like these going between us?” (There had probably been six or eight.) “Here I am sixty and you’re forty, and you can’t even keep up with me.  And you pretend to give the general public advice on life!  Well, go on; God pity the public, is all I say,” and he dismissed him, calling out another name.

Now came a fat, bald soul, with dewlaps and a protruding stomach, who later I learned was a manufacturer of clothing—­six hundred employees under him—­down in health and nerves, really all “shot to pieces” physically.  Plainly nervous at the sound of his name, he puffed quickly into position, grabbing wildly after the purposely eccentric throws which his host made and which kept him running to left and right in an all but panicky mood.