Tish Plays the Game Read Online Free

for instance, must be able to walk for considerable distances, carrying a weight of some size.”
    “What do you mean by ‘in the pink’?” Aggie asked suspiciously.
    “What you are not,” Tish said with a certain scorn. “How many muscles have you got?”
    “All I need,” said Aggie rather acidly.
    “And of all you have, can you use one muscle, outside of the ordinary ones that carry you about?”
    “I don’t need to.”
    “Have you ever stood up, naked to the air, and felt shame at your flaccid muscles and your puny strength?”
    “Really, Tish!” I protested. “I’ll walk if you insist. But I don’t have to take off my clothes and feel shame at my flabbiness to do it.”
    She softened at that, and it ended by our agreeing to fall in with her mysterious plan by going to a physical trainer. I confess to a certain tremor when we went for our first induction into the profundities of bodily development. There was a sign outside, with a large picture of a gentleman with enormous shoulders and a pigeon breast, and beneath it were the words: “I will make you a better man.” But Tish was confident and calm.
    The first day, however, was indeed trying. We found, for instance, that we were expected to take off all our clothing and to put on one-piece jersey garments, without skirts or sleeves, and reaching only to the knees. As if this were not enough, the woman attendant said when we were ready “In you go, dearies,” and shoved us into a large bare room where a man was standing with his chest thrown out, and wearing only a pair of trousers and a shirt which had shrunk to almost nothing. Aggie clutched me by the arm.
    “I’ve got to have stockings, Lizzie!” she whispered. “I don’t feel decent.”
    But the woman had closed the door, and Tish was explaining that we wished full and general muscular development.
    “The human body,” she said, “instantly responds to care and guidance, and what we wish is simply to acquire perfect coordination. ‘The easy slip of muscles underneath the polished skin,’ as some poet has put it.”
    “Yeah,” said the man. “All right. Lie down in a row on the mat, and when I count, raise the right leg in the air and drop it. Keep on doing it. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
    “Lizzie!” Aggie threw at me in an agony. “Lizzie, I simply can’t!”
    “Quick,” said the trainer. “I’ve got four pounds to take off a welterweight this afternoon. Right leg, ladies. Up, down; one, two—”
    Never since the time in Canada when Aggie and I were taking a bath in the lake, and a fisherman came and fished from a boat for two hours while we sat in the icy water to our necks, have I suffered such misery.
    “Other leg,” said the trainer. And later: “Right leg up, cross, up, down. Left leg up, cross, up, down.” Aside from the lack of dignity of the performance came very soon the excruciating ache of our weary flesh. Limb by limb and muscle by muscle he made us work, and when we were completely exhausted on the mat he stood us up on our feet in a row and looked us over.
    “You’ve got a long way to go, ladies,” he said sternly. “It’s a gosh-awful shame the way you women neglect your bodies. Hold in the abdomen and throw out the chest. Balance easily on the ball of the foot. Now touch the floor with the finger tips, as I do.”
    “Young man,” I protested, “I haven’t been able to do that since I was sixteen.”
    “Well, you’ve had a long rest,” he said coldly. “Put your feet apart. That’ll help.”
    When the lesson was over we staggered out, and Aggie leaned against a wall and moaned. “It’s too much, Tish,” she said feebly. “I’m all right with my clothes on, and anyhow, I’m satisfied as I am. I’m the one to please, not that wretch in there.”
    Tish, however, had got her breath and said that she felt like a new woman, and that blood had got to parts of her it had never reached before. But Aggie went sound asleep in the cabinet bath