get anything to eat to speak of. The diet here,' says,
'is exclusively vegeterrible. You wouldn't scarcely believe it,' he
says, 'but we're paying out good money for this. Some of us is here to
get cured of what the docters think we've got, and some of us is here,'
he says, 'because as long as we stay here they ain't so liable to lock
us up in a regular asylum. Yes,' he says, pensively, 'we've got all
kinds here. That lady yonder,' he says, pointing to a large female who's
dressed all in white like a week's washing and ain't got no shoes on,
'she's getting back to nature. She walks around in the dew barefooted.
It takes quite a lot of dew,' he says. 'And that fat one just beyond her
believes in reincarnation.'

"'You don't say!' I says.

"'Yes,' he says, 'I do. She wont eat potatoes not under no
circumstances, because she thinks that in her last previous existence
she was a potato herself.'

"I takes a squint at the lady. She has a kind of a round face with two
or three chins that she don't actually need, and little knobby features.

"'Well,' I says, 'if I'm any judge, she ain't entirely recovered yet.
Might I ask,' I says, 'what is your particular delusion? Are you a
striped cabbage worm or a pet white rabbit?'

"I was thinking about that lettuce leaf which he held in his mitt.

"'Not exactly,' he says, 'I was such a good liver that I developed a bad
one and so I paid a specialist eighty dollars to send me here. At this
writing,' he says, 'the beasts of the field have but little on me. We
both browse, but they've got cuds to chew on afterwards. It's
sickening,' he says in tones of the uttermost conviction. 'Do you know
what we had for breakfast this morning? Nuts,' he says, 'mostly nuts,
which it certainly was rank cannibalism on the part of many of those
present to partake thereof,' he says. 'This here frayed foliage which I
hold in my hand,' he says, 'is popularly known as the mid-forenoon
refreshment. It's got imitation salad dressing on it to make it more
tasty. Later on there'll be more of the same, but the big doings will be
pulled off at dinner to-night. You just oughter see us at dinner,' he
says with a bitter laugh. 'There'll be a mess of lovely boiled carrots,'
he says, 'and some kind of chopped fodder, and if we're all real good
and don't spill things on our bibs or make spots on the tablecloth, why,
for dessert we'll each have a nice dried prune. I shudder to think,' he
says, 'what I could do right t