like a man he wouldn't be sick."

He paced the bedroom--the usual setting for such parental discussions
--in his nightgown, shaking his big, grizzled head and gesticulating
to his bedded spouse. "My Lord!" he said. "If a little, teeny bit
o' work like this is too much for him, why, he ain't fit for anything!
It's nine-tenths imagination, and the rest of it--well, I won't say
it's deliberate, but I WOULD like to know just how much of it's put
on!"

"Bibbs didn't want the doctor," said Mrs. Sheridan. "It was when
he was here to dinner that night, and noticed how he couldn't eat
anything. Honey, you better come to bed."

"Eat!" he snorted. "Eat! It's work that makes men eat! And it's
imagination that keeps people from eatin'. Busy men don't get time
for that kind of imagination; and there's another thing you'll notice
about good health, if you'll take the trouble to look around you
Mrs. Sheridan: busy men haven't got time to be sick and they don't
GET sick. You just think it over and you'll find that ninety-nine
per cent. of the sick people you know are either women or loafers.
Yes, ma'am!"

"Honey," she said again, drowsily, "you better come to bed."

"Look at the other boys," her husband bade her. "Look at Jim and
Roscoe. Look at how THEY work! There isn't a shiftless bone in their
bodies. Work never made Jim or Roscoe sick. Jim takes half the load
off my shoulders already. Right now there isn't a harder-workin',
brighter business man in this city than Jim. I've pushed him, but