That day began with attentions to his physical well-being.
There were exercises, conducted with great vigor and
rejoicing, followed by a tub, artesian cold, and a loud and
joyous singing of ballads.

At fifty R. H. D. might have posed to some Praxiteles and,
copied in marble, gone down the ages as "statue of a young
athlete." He stood six feet and over, straight as a Sioux
chief, a noble and leonine head carried by a splendid torso.
His skin was as fine and clean as a child's. He weighed
nearly two hundred pounds and had no fat on him. He was the
weight-throwing rather than the running type of athlete, but
so tenaciously had he clung to the suppleness of his
adolescent days that he could stand stiff-legged and lay his
hands flat upon the floor.

The singing over, silence reigned. But if you had listened at
his door you must have heard a pen going, swiftly and boldly.
He was hard at work, doing unto others what others had done
unto him. You were a stranger to him; some magazine had
accepted a story that you had written and published it. R. H.
D. had found something to like and admire in that story (very
little perhaps), and it was his duty and pleasure to tell you
so. If he had liked the story very much he would send you
instead of a note a telegram. Or it might be that you had
drawn a picture, or, as a cub reporter, had shown golden
promise in a half-column of unsigned print; R. H. D. would
find you out, and find time to praise you and help you. So it
was that when he emerged from his room at sharp eight o'clock,
he was wide-awake and happy and hungry, and whistled and