Now, so far as I recalled, I had never taken any indoor exercise excepting once in a while to knock on wood.  I abhorred the thought of ritualistic bedroom calisthenics such as were recommended by divers health experts.  Climbing out of a warm bed and standing out in the middle of a cold room and giving an imitation of a demoniac semaphore had never appealed to me as a fascinating divertisement for a grown man.  As I think I may have remarked once before, lying at full length on one’s back on the floor immediately upon awakening of a morning and raising the legs to full length twenty times struck me as a performance lacking in dignity and utterly futile.

Besides, what sort of a way was that to greet the dewy morn?

So as an alternative I decided to enroll for membership at a gymnasium where I could have company at my exercising and make a sport of what otherwise would be in the nature of a punishment.  This I did.  With a group of fellow inmates for my team mates, I tossed the medicine ball about.  My score at this was perfect; that is to say, sometimes when it came my turn to catch I missed the ball, but the ball never once missed me.  Always it landed on some tender portion of my anatomy, so that my average, written in black-and-blue spots, remained an even 1000.

Daily I cantered around and around and around a running track until my breathing was such probably as to cause people passing the building to think that the West Side Y.M.C.A. was harboring a pet porpoise inside.  Once, doing this, I caught a glimpse of my own form in a looking-glass which for some reason was affixed to one of the pillars flanking the oval.  A looking-glass properly did not belong there; distinctly it was out of place and could serve no worthy purpose.  Very few of the sights presented in a gym which largely is patronized by city-bred fat men are deserving to be mirrored in a glass.  They are not such visions as one would care to store in fond memory’s album.  Be that as it may, here was this mirror, and swinging down the course suddenly I beheld myself in it.  Clad in a chastely simple one-piece garment, with my face all a blistered crimson and my fingers interlaced together about where the third button of the waistcoat, counting from the bottom up, would have been had I been wearing any waistcoat, I reminded myself of a badly scorched citizen escaping in a scantily dressed condition from a burning homestead bringing with him the chief family treasure clasped in his arms.  He had saved the pianola!

From the running track or the medicine-ball court I would repair to the steam room and simmer pleasantly in a temperature of 240 degrees Fahrenheit—­I am sure I have the figures right—­until all I needed before being served was to have the gravy slightly thickened with flour and a dash of water cress added here and there.  Having remained in the steam cabinet until quite done, I next would jump into the swimming pool, which concluded the afternoon’s entertainment.