DERS AND OTHERS

XIII

"We kep' summer boarders the past season," said Orlando McCusick, of
East Kortright, to me as we sat in the springhouse and drank cold milk
from a large yellow bowl with white stripes around it; "we kep' boarders
from town all summer in the Catskills, and that is why I don't figger on
doing of it this year. You fellers that writes the pieces and makes the
pictures of us folks what keeps the boarders has got the laugh on us as
a general thing, but I would like to be interviewed a little for the
press, so's that I can be set right before the American people."

"Well, if you will state the case fairly and honestly, I will try to
give you a chance."

"In the first place," said Orlando, taking off his boot and removing his
jack-knife which had worked its way through his pocket and down his
leg, then squinting along the new "tap" with one eye to see how it was
wearing before he put it on, "I did not know how healthy it was here
until I read in a railroad pamphlet, I guess you call it, where it says
that the relation of temperature to oxygen in a certain quantity of air
is of the highest importance. 'In a cubic foot,' it says, 'of air at
3,000 feet elevation, with a temperature of 32 degrees, there is as much
oxygen as in a like amount of air at sea level with a temperature of 65
degrees. Another important fact that should not be lost sight of,' this
able feller says, 'by those affected by pulmonary diseases, is that
three or four times as much oxygen is consumed in activity as in
repose.' (Hence the hornet's nests introduced by me last season.) 'Then
in climates made stimulating by increased electric tension and cold,
activity must be followed by an increased endosmose of oxygen."

"So you decided to select and furnish endosmose of oxygen to sufferers?"

[Illustration: ... _'Three or four times as much oxygen is consumed in
activity as in repose.' (Hence the hornet's nests introduced by me last
season.)_ (Page 124)]

"Yes. I went into it with no notions of making a pile of money, but I
argued that these folks would give anything for health. We folks are
apt to argy that people from town are all well off and liberal, and that
if they can come out and get all the buttermilk and straw rides they
want, and a little flush of color and a wood-tick on the back of their
necks, they don't reck a pesky reck what it costs. This is only
occasionly so. Ask any doctor you know of if the average man won't giv