g
about an operation. This detail attended to, a young man, dressed in
white garments and wearing an expression that stamped him as one who had
suffered a recent deep bereavement came and relieved me of my hand bag
and escorted me upstairs.

As we passed through the upper corridors I had my first introduction
to the hospital smell, which is a smell compounded of iodoform, ether,
gruel, and something boiling. All hospitals have it, I understand. In
time you get used to it, but you never really care for it.

The young man led me into a small room tastefully decorated with four
walls, a floor, a ceiling, a window sill and a window, a door and a
doorsill, and a bed and a chair. He told me to go to bed. I did not want
to go to bed--it was not my regular bedtime--but he made a point of it,
and I judged it was according to regulations; so I undressed and put on
my night clothes and crawled in. He left me, taking my other clothes and
my shoes with him, but I was not allowed to get lonely.

A little later a ward surgeon appeared, to put a few inquiries of a
pointed and personal nature. He particularly desired to know what my
trouble was. I explained to him that I couldn't tell him--he would have
to see Doctor X or Doctor Z; they probably knew, but were keeping it a
secret between themselves.

The answer apparently satisfied him, because immediately after that he
made me sign a paper in which I assumed all responsibility for what was
to take place the next morning.

This did not seem exactly fair. As I pointed out to him, it was the
surgeon's affair, not mine; and if the surgeon made a mistake the joke
would be on him and not on me, because in that case I would not be here
anyhow. But I signed, as requested, on the dotted line, and he departed.

After that, at intervals, the chief house surgeon dropped in, without
knocking, and the head nurse came, and an interne or so, and a ward
nurse, and the special nurse who was to have direct charge of me. It
dawned on me that I was not having any more privacy in that hospital
than a goldfish.

About eleven o'clock an orderly came, and, without consulting my wishes
in the matter, he undressed me until I could have passed almost anywhere
for September Morn's father, and gave me a clean shave, twice over, on
one of my most prominent plane surfaces. I must confess I enjoyed that
part of it. So far as I am able to recall, it was the only shave I
have ever had where the operator did not