you treated a
child so, or a servant, aye, or a dumb beast, some preventive society
would be at you for cruelty and neglect. They'd call me for the
prosecution, and by gad, sir, my evidence would send you to Portland
or Dartmoor--fine healthy places, both of 'em, by the way! But people
seem to think they're licensed to treat their own bodies with any
amount of cruelty and neglect. A grave mistake; a grave mistake! In
the ideal state, sir, Citizen Jones will no more be allowed to
maltreat and injure the health of Citizen Jones than he will be
allowed to break the head or poison the food of Citizen Smith. Why
should he? Each is of the same value in the eyes of the state; and, we
may suppose, in the eyes of his Maker.'

The good man blew his nose, and endeavoured to introduce extreme
severity into his kindly and indomitably cheerful expression.

'Yes, sir,' he resumed. 'You've got to turn over a new leaf from now
on. Three good, plain meals a day, taken to the stroke of the clock.
Eight hours in bed every night of your life, and nine if you can get
'em. Two hours of walkin', or other equally good exercise--if you can
discover its equal; I can't--in the open air every day. And anything
less will be a flat dereliction of duty, and bad citizenship, remember
that. This is for by and by, of course. Just now you want twelve hours
in bed, and half a dozen light meals a day. Mrs. Gilchrist knows all
about that. Good, sensible woman, Mrs. Gilchrist. Wish there were more
like her, these days. Oh, I'll be seeing you again, from time to time.
Don't you bother your head about "accounts," my dear sir. And when you
begin to get about now do oblige me by remembering your duty to
yourself, as I've told you. As your doctor, I warn you, it's necessary
in your case--absolutely necessary. _Good_-morning!'

And so he trotted off to his high dog-cart and his morning rounds. An
excellent and kindly man, designed by Nature, his own temperament, and
long use, for the precise part in life he played. Such adequacy and
fitness are rare, and very admirable. I sometimes think that if I
could have exactly obeyed this excellent physician, my whole life had
been quite different. But then, to be able exactly to obey him,
perhaps it would have been necessary for me to have been a different
person in the beginning. And then, I might never have met him,
and--there's the end of a profitless speculation.

As a fact I surreptitiously resumed work on that book