circumstances.

"Some people think that way," solemnly commented the clerk, "but they
don't know Mr. Culhane. He does about as he pleases in these matters. He
doesn't do this any more to make money but rather to amuse himself, I
think. He always has more applicants than he accepts."

I began to see a light. Perhaps there was something to this place after
all. I did not even partially sense the drift of the situation, though,
until bedtime when, after having been served a very frugal meal and
shown to my very simple room, a kind of cell, promptly at nine o'clock
lights were turned off. I lit a small candle and was looking over some
things which I had placed in a grip, when I heard a voice in the hall
outside: "Candles out, please! Candles out! All guests in bed!" Then it
came to me that a very rigorous regime was being enforced here.

The next morning as I was still soundly sleeping at five-thirty a loud
rap sounded at my door. The night before I had noticed above my bed a
framed sign which read: "Guests must be dressed in running trunks, shoes
and sweater, and appear in the gymnasium by six sharp." "Gymnasium at
six! Gymnasium at six!" a voice echoed down the hall. I bounced out of
bed. Something about the very air of the place made me feel that it was
dangerous to attempt to trifle with the routine here. The tiger-like
eyes of my host did not appeal to me as retaining any softer ray in them
for me than for others. I had paid my six hundred ... I had better earn
it. I was down in the great room in my trunks, sweater, dressing-gown,
running shoes in less than five minutes.

And that room! By that time as odd a company of people as I have ever
seen in a gymnasium had already begun to assemble. The leanness! the
osseosity! the grandiloquent whiskers parted in the middle! the
mustachios! the goatees! the fat, Hoti-like stomachs! the protuberant
knees! the thin arms! the bald or semi-bald pates! the spectacles or
horn glasses or pince-nezes!--laid aside a few moments later, as the
exercises began. Youth and strength in the pink of condition, when clad
only in trunks, a sweater and running shoes, are none too
acceptable--but middle age! And out in the world, I reflected rather
sadly, they all wore the best of clothes, had their cars, servants, city
and country houses perhaps, their factories, employees, institutions.
Ridiculous! Pitiful! As lymphatic and flabby as oysters without their
shells, myself included. It was real