of the presence of in media tutissimus ibis."

"Great Scott! can I ever get well?" groaned poor Jake. Rachel's strain
was on her risibles, and to make her face express only sympathy and
concern.

"And," continued the remorseless Surgeon, in a tone of the kindliest
commiseration, "in the absence of the least espirt de corps, and dulce
et decorum est pro patria mori feeling in you it is apparent that
none of your mental processes are going on properly, which deranges
everything."

"Can't I be sent home to die?" whimpered the wretched Jake.

"Not in your present condition. I notice, in addition to what I have
told you, that your heart is not right--its action is depraved, so to
speak." This with a glance at Rachel, which brought the crimson to that
damsel's cheek.

"O, Doctor, please try to do something for me right off, before I get
any worse," pleaded Jake, with the tears starting in his eyes.

Rachel took this opportunity to slip away to where she could laugh
unobserved. The Surgeon's facial muscles were too well trained to feel
any strain. He continued in the same tone of gentle consideration:

"I have already ordered the preparation of some remedies. The Steward
will be here in a few minutes with the barber, who will shave your head,
that we may apply a couple of fly-bisters behind your ears. They are
also spreading a big mustard-plaster in the dispensary for you, which
will cover your whole breast and stomach. These, with a strong dose of
castor-oil, may bring you around so that you will be able to go back to
duty in a short time."

Jake did not notice the unsheathed sarcasm in the Surgeon's allusion to
returning to duty. He was too delighted with the chance of escaping all
the horrors enumerated to think of aught else, and he even forgot to beg
for Rachel to come and sit beside his bedside, as he had intended doing,
until the blisters began to remind him that they stuck closer than a
brother. After that he devoted his entire attention to them, as a man is
apt to.

A good-sized blister, made according to the United States Pharmacopoeia,
has few equals as a means of concentrating the attention. When it takes
a fair hold of its work it leaves the gentleman whom it patronizes
little opportunity to think of anything else than it and what it
is doing. Everything else is forgotten, that it may receive full
consideration. Then comes in an opportunity for a vigorous imagination.
No one ever underestimates the wor