He was one of those rarely gifted men who find
their chiefest pleasure not in looking backward or forward,
but in what is going on at the moment. Weeks did not have to
pass before it was forced upon his knowledge that Tuesday, the
fourteenth (let us say), had been a good Tuesday. He knew it
the moment he waked at 7 A. M. and perceived the Tuesday
sunshine making patterns of bright light upon the floor. The
sunshine rejoiced him and the knowledge that even before
breakfast there was vouchsafed to him a whole hour of life.
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.
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