stoves, smoking (as he characterized them) “filthy pipes” or chewing tobacco and spitting, actually lousy, and never changing their clothes for weeks on end—­how he, revolting at all this and the disease and fevers ensuing, had kept out of doors as much as possible, even in the coldest weather, and finding no other way of keeping clean the single shift of underwear and the one uniform he possessed he had, every other day or so, washed all, uniform and underwear, with or without soap as conditions might compel, in a nearby stream, often breaking the ice to get to the water, and dancing about naked in the cold, running and jumping, while they dried on bushes or the branch of a tree.

“Those poor rats,” he added most contemptuously, “used to sit inside and wonder at me or laugh and jeer, hovering over their stoves, but a lot of them died that very winter, and here I am today.”

And well we knew it.  I used to study the faces of many of the puffy, gelatinous souls, so long confined to their comfortable offices, restaurants and homes that two hours on horseback all but wore them out, and wonder how this appealed to them.  I think that in the main they took it as an illustration of either one of two things:  insanity, or giant and therefore not-to-be-imitated strength.

But in regard to them Culhane was by no means so tolerant.  One day, as I recall, there arrived at the sanitarium a stout and mushy-looking Hebrew, with a semi-bald pate, protruding paunch and fat arms and legs, who applied to Culhane for admission.  And, as much to irritate his other guests, I think, as to torture this particular specimen into some semblance of vitality, he admitted him.  And thereafter, from the hour he entered until he left about the time I did, Culhane seemed to follow him with a wolfish and savage idea.  He gave him a most damnable and savage horse, one that kicked and bit, and at mounting time would place Mr. Itzky (I think his name was) up near the front of the procession where he could watch him.  Always at mount-time, when we were permitted to ride, there was inside the great stable a kind of preliminary military inspection of all our accouterments, seeing that we had to saddle and bridle and bring forth our own steeds.  This particular person could not saddle a horse very well nor put on his bit and bridle.  The animal was inclined to rear and plunge when he came near, to fix him with an evil eye and bite at him.

And above all things Culhane seemed to value strain of this kind.  If he could just make his guests feel the pressure of necessity in connection with their work he was happy.  To this end he would employ the most contemptuous and grilling comment.  Thus to Mr. Itzky he was most unkind.  He would look over all most cynically, examining the saddles and bridles, and then say, “Oh, I see you haven’t learned how to tighten a belly-band yet,” or “I do believe you have your saddle hind-side to.  You would if you could, that’s one