Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

4 ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. fashionable world in a large Midwestern city. And now he is—nothing! Without going any farther into his past than the preceding Friday week, or into any greater detail, we will know all that is necessary about the young man in ques- tion. In that short length of time this social butterfly metamorphosed into a lowly worm. I do not mean to imply that Rollin had a past. He did not—absolutely not! He did not fall from grace—it was snatched right out from under him. His history, up to the time this story begins, had been a drab thing, painful to recall. His days were all like so many plain beads upon a string. The only excitement possible was now that the string threatened to break! ‘When a young society bachelor has passed the first flush of exuberant youth, and en- tered upon the middle thirties, he begins to discover that a world of continuous and unlimited rest and play can become very dull, even to the great folk of considerable wealth and envied social position. Now Rollin lived the ruttiest kind of a routine. - He had never done anything out of the ordinary, and nothing had ever done anything to him. He of the soft ways and softer living just sat down in easy chairs - in the most comfortable places in the world while the manhood within him withered up and died. Rollin had, seemingly, always been tall and thin—the delight of expensive tailors. He was one of the few men in the whole world to resemble a magazine illustrator’s idea of a young society blade. Actually, he was just that tall and thin! Immaculate, neat, tubbed, manicured, done to the last button; suave and highly cultured, schooled in allt the horrible details of social etiquette. He had a rare good sense of humor that made him a very likable fellow, but he had no business, no occupation, nor any desire for such. He didn’t even maintain an office: down town where he could pretend to be busy. He admitted that such things bored him to madness. Perhaps this was due to the fact that he had never been well. Long years ago it had become a fixed habit to look upon Rollin as an amateur invalid, but a re- markably cheerful one. This had grown upon him with his years until now he was @ professional invalid—and not so cheerful. Just lately four doctors of international re- pute had agreed that he could not live three months—and two months were already gone. They did not agree as to just what was the matter with him. Indeed, they held four distinct and sep- arate views, with equally long names, which the patient could not remember and was glad of it. He only knew that he could not sleep; that he had no -vappetite; that he seemed weak all over; that he could not possibly be any thinner and have room in- side for all his aches and pains. He was dizzy in the morning and feverish at night, which only varied when his dizziness over- took him at night to leave him feverish in the morn. He was disgusted with himself and the whole order of things, and thirty days seemed a Jong time to wait. Unquestionably there was something rad- ically the matter with him physically, but all the doctors in the land couldn’t tell him what it was. They doctored him. They dieted him. They X-rayed him. They shipped him away to sanatoriums and health resorts. One of the new school tried to find a reactionary complex in his subconscious mind which could be identified as the source of his trouble. He couldn’t find it. Another told him to repeat slowly, every few minutes, a certain self-convincing phrase, and he would soon make himself believe that he felt better and better. This talking the same thing to himself all day near drove him frantic. Others brought him new cults and new thoughts. About this time Rollin decided that if he had to die in a few weeks he would do so in comfort and not be pounded to death by chiropractors or bored to death by searchers for complexes and new cult propa- gandists. So, on Friday morning, Rollin had sneaked away from a sanatorium and re- COMME DOOKxS.COnn