self while
suffering from facial neuralgia; for neuralgia does not spare the good,
the true or the beautiful. She comes along and nips the poor yeoman as
well as the millionaire who sits in the lap of luxury. Millionaires who
flatter themselves that they can evade neuralgia by going and sitting in
the lap of luxury make a great mistake.

"And do you find that this large porcelain pill relieves you at all, Mr.
Gould?" I asked him during one of these attacks, as he sat in his studio
with his face tied up in hot bran.

"No, it does me no good whatever," said the man who likes to take a lame
railroad and put it on its feet by issuing more bonds. "It contains a
little morphine, which dulls the pain but there's nothing in the pill to
cure the cause. My neuralgia comes from indigestion. My appetite is four
sizes too large for a man of my height, and every little while I
overeat. I then get dangerously ill and stocks become greatly depressed
in consequence. I am now in a position where, if I had a constitution
that would stand the strain, I could get well off in a few years, but I
am not strong enough. Every little change in the weather affects me. I
see a red-headed girl on the street and immediately afterwards I see one
of these big white pills."

"Are you sure, Mr. Gould," I asked him with some solicitude, as I bent
forward and inhaled the rich fragrance of the carnation in his
button-hole, "that you have not taken cold in some way?"

"Possibly I have," he said, as he shrank back in a petulant way, I
thought. "Last week I got my feet a little damp while playing the hose
on some of my stocks, but I hardly think that was what caused the
trouble. I am apt to overeat, as I said. I am especially fond of fruit,
too. When I was a boy I had no trouble, because I always divided my
fruit with another boy, of whom I was very fond. I would always divide
my fruit in two equal parts, keeping one of these and eating the other
myself. Many and many a time when this boy and I went out together and
only had one wormy apple between us, I have divided it and given him the
worm.

[Illustration]

"As a boy, I was taught to believe that half is always better than the
hole."

"And are you not afraid that this neuralgia after it has picnicked
around among your features may fly to your vitals?"

"Possibly so," said Mr. Gould, snapping the hunting case of his
massive silver watch with a loud report, "but I am guarding against this
by keepin