quences of the furious pace was that people's health
broke down very quickly; and there were all sorts of bizarre ways of
restoring it. One person would be eating nothing but spinach, and
another would be living on grass. One would chew a mouthful of soup
thirty-two times; another would eat every two hours, and another only
once a week. Some went out in the early morning and walked bare-footed
in the grass, and others went hopping about the floor on their hands
and knees to take off fat. There were "rest cures" and "water cures,"
"new thought" and "metaphysical healing" and "Christian Science"; there
was an automatic horse, which one might ride indoors, with a register
showing the distance travelled. Montague met one man who had an
electric machine, which cost thirty thousand dollars, and which took
hold of his arms and feet and exercised him while he waited. He met a
woman who told him she was riding an electric camel!

Everywhere one went there were new people, spending their money in new
and incredible ways. Here was a man who had bought a chapel and turned
it into a theatre, and hired professional actors, and persuaded his
friends to come and see him act Shakespeare. Here was a woman who
costumed herself after figures in famous paintings, with arrangements
of roses and cherry leaves, and wreaths of ivy and laurel--and with
costumes for her pet dogs to match! Here was a man who paid six dollars
a day for a carnation four inches across; and a girl who wore a hat
trimmed with fresh morning-glories, and a ball costume with swarms of
real butterflies tied with silk threads; and another with a hat made of
woven silver, with ostrich plumes forty inches long made entirely of
silver films. Here was a man who hired a military company to drill all
day long to prepare a floor for dancing; and another who put up a
building at a cost of thirty thousand dollars to give a debutante dance
for his daughter, and then had it torn down the day after. Here was a
man who bred rattlesnakes and turned them loose by thousands, and had
driven everybody away from the North Carolina estate of one of the
Wallings. Here was a man who was building himself a yacht with a model
dairy and bakery on board, and a French laundry and a brass band. Here
was a million-dollar racing-yacht with auto-boats on it and a platoon
of marksmen, and some Chinese laundrymen, and two physicians for its
half-insane occupant. Here was a man who had bought a Rhine castle