Still he continued to complain and complain and to grow more and more
worried, until finally he slowed up and was lost in the background.
Reaching the gymnasium at the proper time I bathed and dressed myself
quickly and waited on the balcony over the bathroom to see what would
happen in this case. As a rule Culhane stood in or near the door at this
time, having just returned from some route or "block" himself, to see
how the others were faring. And he was there when the iron manufacturer
came limping up, fifteen minutes late, one hand over his heart, the
other to his mouth, and exclaiming as he drew near, "I do believe, Mr.
Culhane, that I can't stand this. I'm afraid there is something the
matter with my heart. It's fluttering so."
"To hell with your heart! Didn't I tell you there was nothing the matter
with it? Get into the bath!"
The troubled manufacturer, overawed or reassured as the case might be,
entered the bath and ten minutes later might have been seen entering the
dining-room, as comfortable apparently as any one. Afterwards he
confessed to me on one of our jogs that there was something about
Culhane which _gave him confidence_ and made him believe that there
wasn't anything wrong with his heart--which there wasn't, I presume.
The intensely interesting thing about Culhane was this different, very
original and forthright if at times brutal point of view. It was a
blazing material world of which he was the center, the sun, and yet
always I had the sense of very great life. With no knowledge of or
interest in the superior mental sciences or arts or philosophies, still
he seemed to suggest and even live them. He was in his way an
exemplification of that ancient Greek regimen and stark thought which
brought back the ten thousand from Cunaxa. He seemed even to suggest in
his rough way historical perspective and balance. He knew men, and
apparently he sensed how at best and at bottom life was to be lived,
with not too much emotional or appetitive swaying in any one direction,
and not too little either.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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