toried construction which served as a
waiting-room. Under the plum and cherry trees, now laden with fruit,
little groups of patients were sitting on the garden seats, chatting
amicably together and enjoying the morning sunshine while others
wandered in twos and threes among the flowers and strawberry beds. The
room reserved for the treatments was already crowded, but in spite of
that eager newcomers constantly tried to gain entrance. The
window-sills on the ground floor were beset, and a dense knot had
formed in the doorway. Inside, the patients had first occupied the
seats which surrounded the walls, and then covered the available
floor-space, sitting on camp-stools and folding-chairs. Coue with some
difficulty found me a seat, and the treatment immediately began.

The first patient he addressed was a frail, middle-aged man who,
accompanied by his daughter, had just arrived from Paris to consult
him. The man was a bad case of nervous trouble. He walked with
difficulty, and his head, arms and legs were afflicted with a continual
tremor. He explained that if he encountered a stranger when walking in
the street the idea that the latter would remark his infirmity
completely paralysed him, and he had to cling to whatever support was
at hand to save himself from falling. At Coue's invitation he rose
from his seat and took a few steps across the floor. He walked slowly,
leaning on a stick; his knees were half bent, and his feet dragged
heavily along the ground.

Coue encouraged him with the promise of improvement. "You have been
sowing bad seed in your Unconscious; now you will sow good seed. The
power by which you have produced these ill effects will in future
produce equally good ones."

The next patient was an excitable, over-worked woman of the artisan
class. When Coue inquired the nature of her trouble, she broke into a
flood of complaint, describing each symptom with a voluble minuteness.
"Madame," he interrupted, "you think too much about your ailments, and
in thinking of them you create fresh ones."

Next came a girl with headaches, a youth with inflamed eyes, and a
farm-labourer incapacitated by varicose veins. In each case Coue
stated that autosuggestion should bring complete relief. Then it was
the turn of a business man who complained of nervousness, lack of
self-confidence and haunting fears.

"When you know the method," said Coue, "you will not allow yourself to
harbour such ideas."

"I wo