wish that he had studied harder at college and was now in a
position to be doing something better than hack work for a
soulless publishing company. Never before had he been so
completely certain that he was sick to death of the rut into
which he had fallen.

Skipping brought no balm. He threw down his rope and took up the
Indian clubs. Indian clubs left him still unsatisfied. The
thought came to him that it was a long time since he had done his
Larsen Exercises. Perhaps they would heal him.

The Larsen Exercises, invented by a certain Lieutenant Larsen, of
the Swedish Army, have almost every sort of merit. They make a
man strong, supple, and slender. But they are not dignified.
Indeed, to one seeing them suddenly and without warning for the
first time, they are markedly humorous. The only reason why King
Henry, of England, whose son sank with the White Ship, never
smiled again, was because Lieutenant Larsen had not then invented
his admirable exercises.

So complacent, so insolently unselfconscious had Ashe become in
the course of three months, owing to his success in inducing the
populace to look on anything he did with the indulgent eye of
understanding, that it simply did not occur to him, when he
abruptly twisted his body into the shape of a corkscrew, in
accordance with the directions in the lieutenant's book for the
consummation of Exercise One, that he was doing anything funny.

And the behavior of those present seemed to justify his
confidence. The proprietor of the Hotel Mathis regarded him