small and frail that his narrow face was rescued from
inconsequence only by a trimly cropped Van-Dyck with a dignified
sprinkling of gray. I always felt that, should I ever see him in a
bathing suit, I would have to seek a new physician. I could never again
think of him as sufficiently grown-up to practise an adult vocation. Yet
when the doctor spoke his mentality issued out of its small habitation
of flesh and expanded to commanding proportion.

The little doctor was in fine a very great doctor, and on this occasion
he was bullying me with the large authority of a Bonaparte.

"But, Doctor--" I began protestingly.

He raised a small hand which suggested the claw of a delicate bird and
fixed me with quizzical eyes that had the faculty of biting sharply
through a man's unspoken thoughts.

"Don't assume to say 'but' to me," he sternly enjoined; and since we had
long known each other, not only as physician and patient, but also as
men who breakfasted at the same hour and the same club table, I
momentarily heeded.

"Once upon a time," he continued, "the German Kaiser presumed to
question a pilot on his imperial yacht. Do you recall the result?"

"No," said I, "I don't, but----"

Again the doctor eyed me, basilisk fashion, across the bacon and eggs of
our belated morning meal, as he continued:

"He very properly reminded the Emperor that upon a vessel in the high
seas, a pilot acknowledges no superior this side of Eternity. In matters
of health I take the bridge. You obey."

"But--" I weakly insisted.

"You presume to think because you house your nerves in a well-muscled
body that they are infallible," he implacably continued. "I've seen
rotten motors in excellent garages. I've seen unhappy wives immured in
palaces, and I've seen finer figures of men than you in lunatic
asylums."

"My nerves are simply of the high-strung type," I argued.

"Those are the kind that snap," retorted the sage. "If you were a
racehorse, it might be a matter of reasonable pride to you to be bred in
the purple. Being a man with no avocation except the spending of
unearned money, it means that you are perilously over-sensitized."

"What unpleasant pedantry are you leading up to?" I demanded. "Out with
it."

"I mean to. You have the artistic temperament which, without genius, is
worse than useless. You choose to regard yourself a failure and grow
morose because you have found the law uncongenial and because editors
earn their salarie