not_.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

A PSYCHOPATHIC INSTITUTION.

Reading my _Figaro_ the other day--as I hope I need not state it is my
custom devoutly to do--I came upon the following passage in the review
of a book called "Psychopathy; or, the True Healing Art. By Joseph
Ashman. London: Burns, Southampton Row. We have not the pleasure of
being personally acquainted with Joseph Ashman, and we fear that the
loss is ours. Judging him through the medium of his book, he must,
indeed, be a rara avis.... The one great thing," it went on to say,
"that Joseph Ashman wants the world to know is, that he cures disease by
very simple means. And all that the world wants to know from Joseph
Ashman is, Are these cures real--are his statements facts? Why, then,
does not Joseph content himself with his facts? He has plenty of them.
Here is one:--'Seeing one day a cabman with a swollen face standing by a
police-court ready to prosecute a man who had assaulted him, I asked if,
on condition I healed him, he would forgive his adversary. He replied
that he would, and we accordingly got into his cab together. Bringing
out the magnetized carte, I told him to look at it, and at the same
time made a few motions over the swelling with my hand. I then left him
feeling much better, and returned in an hour's time, when I found him
taking a glass of beer with his antagonist, whom he had forgiven.'"

Now as the one pursuit and end of my present existence is the discovery
of rarae aves, I need not say I at once took up the clue herein afforded,
and went in pursuit of Joseph Ashman. I found not only him but his
institution, for Mr. Ashman does not work single-handed. It is in the
Marylebone Road, almost opposite the Yorkshire Stingo; and is most
modest and unpretending in its outward semblance, being situated in one
of those semi-rustic houses so indicative of suburban London, down an
overstocked garden, into which you enter by means of a blistered iron
gate, painted violently green, and swinging heavily on its hinges. Down
a vista of decrepit dahlias one sped to the portal, alongside which was
a trio of bell-handles, one above the other, showing that the
Psychopathic Institution did not occupy the whole even of that modest
domicile. I always approach these manifold bells with considerable
diffidence, conscious that I must inevitably ring the wrong one; so, on
this occasion, I rang none at all, but knocked a faint double knock on
the knocker by way of c