This doctor prescribed exercise, as had all the others whom I had ever consulted. As it was the consensus of medical opinion that I needed exercise, I thought I would take it scientifically and in the right manner; so I employed a qualified _masseur_ to give me massage treatment. I thought passive exercise preferable to the active kind. This fellow, however, did not try to please me--he insisted on rubbing up when I wanted him to rub down, and _vice versa_--so I discharged him. Next I took up swimming and rowing, but one day I had a narrow escape from drowning, so that gave me a distaste for these things. It seemed that I had about exhausted all the physical culture methods that might be considered genteel and in my class. Perhaps it may be more literally correct to say that I had formed a nodding acquaintance with the most of them. [Illustration: Informed me I had psychasthenia anorexia.] One day, as I was wondering what new thing I could annex, the postman handed me a letter. No psychology about this, for the postman comes every day and I get letters nearly every day. But this letter contained an advertisement of an outfit that was guaranteed to increase the stature. Now I was tall enough, but I had a new vanity that I felt like humoring just then. When I occasionally appeared at social functions I wanted to be designated as "the tall, handsome bachelor." I thought that if I went through a course of exercises stretching my ligaments and tendons it would also conduce to health and strength. Growing tall ought to be healthy, all right, I thought. So I got the apparatus--a fiendish-looking thing, composed of ropes, straps, buckles, and pulleys--and I set it up in an unused shed. I had taken exercises with it a few days and liked it first-rate. One evening, about dusk, I went out to take my usual "turn" and had just put on a head-gear suspended from a rope. This by a sort of hanging act was to develop and elongate the muscles of the neck. Just as I swung myself loose, two burly policemen hopped over the fence from the alley, cut the rope, and were dragging me off to the lock-up in spite of my pleadings and protests. I tried to assure them that I was not a lunatic and that I was not bent on suicide. "Shure, thot's what they all say!" was the cold comfort they gave me. As luck would have it, I at last discovered that I had in my pocket some of the directions that went with this new trouble-maker. I prevailed upon these big duffers to read it by their flashlights, and it had its convincing effect upon them. In disgust they released me, one saying to the other:-- "If I'd knowed thot, I'd let the dom'd fool hang a week!" The next day I advertised the apparatus for sale, _cheap_. CHAPTER VII. THE NEURASTHENIC FALLS IN LOVE.