spray me with cheap perfumery
afterward and then try to sell me a bottle of hair tonic.

Having shaved me, the young man did me up amidships in a neat cloth
parcel, took his kit under his arm and went away.

It occurred to me that, considering the trivial nature of the case, a
good deal of fuss was being made over me by persons who could have no
personal concern in the matter whatsoever. This thought recurred to me
frequently as I lay there all tied in a bundle like a week's washing. I
did not feel quite so uppish as I had felt. Why was everybody picking on
me?

Anon I slept, but dreamed fitfully. I dreamed that a whole flock of
surgeons came to my bedside and charted me out in sections, like one
of those diagram pictures you see of a beef in the Handy Compendium of
Universal Knowledge, showing the various cuts and the butcher's pet name
for each cut. Each man took his favorite joint and carried it away,
and when they were all gone I was merely a recent site, full of
reverberating echoes and nothing else.

I have had happier dreams in my time; this was not the kind of dream I
should have selected had the choice been left to me.

When I woke the young sun was shining in at the window, and an
orderly--not the orderly who had shaved me, but another one--was there
in my room and my nurse was waiting outside the door. The orderly
dressed me in a quaint suit of pyjamas cut on the half shell and
buttoning stylishly in the back, princesse mode. Then he rolled in a
flat litter on wheels and stretched me on it, and covered me up with a
white tablecloth, just as though I had been cold Sunday-night supper,
and we started for the operating-room at the top of the building; but
before we started I lit a large black cigar, as Gen. U. S. Grant used to
do when he went into battle. I wished by this to show how indifferent I
was. Maybe he fooled somebody, but I do not believe I possess the same
powers of simulation that Grant had. He must have been a very remarkable
man--Grant must.

The orderly and the nurse trundled me out into the hall and loaded me
into an elevator, which was to carry us up to the top of the hospital.
Several other nurses were already in the elevator. As we came aboard one
of them remarked that it was a fine day. A fine day for what? She did
not finish the sentence.

Everybody wore a serious look. Inside of myself I felt pretty serious
too--serious enough for ten or twelve. I had meant to fling off several
ver