o enlist somebody's interest toward
salving that schooner; but it's no go. I'm going to Cuba, where I've
heard of a pot of money in the Santiago hills. Want to go along?"

"No," I answered. "But, tell me, what killed those men?"

"The Jap must have been an expert in jiu jitsu, the wrestling game of
that country. I've made a stagger at studying medicine since then, and
learned a little. The pneumogastric nerve did the business. It passes
from the base of the brain, down past the heart and lungs and ends near
the stomach. It is motor, sensory, and sympathetic, all in one. Gentle
pressure inhibits breathing, continued pressure, or stimulus, paralyzes
the vocal chords; a continuance of the stimulus renders you
unconscious, and a strong pressure brings about stoppage of the heart
action, and death."

THE MARRIED MAN

He told the story while he and I smoked at one end of his veranda, and
his kindly faced wife talked with "the only girl on earth" at the other
end, beyond reach of his voice. He was a large, portly, and benign old
gentleman, with an infinite experience of life, whom I had long known
as a fellow-tenant in the studio building. He was not an artist, but an
editorial-writer on one of the great dailies, who worked, cooked, and
slept in his studio, until Saturday evening came, when he regularly
disappeared, until Monday morning.

There was nothing in this to surprise me, until he invited the only
girl and myself to visit his country home over Sunday, incidentally
informing us that he was a married man, and had been for more than
twenty years.

And we found him most happily married. Indeed, he and his white-haired
wife were so foolishly fond of each other that their caresses would
have seemed absurd had they not been so genuine.

These old lovers had made much of us; and they seemed so sincerely
interested in our coming marriage that, in the evening, as night
settled over the quiet little suburb, and we sought the veranda for
coolness, I ventured to comment to my host on his mode of life.

"Best plan in the world," he answered. "You'll find it so, after a year
or two of creative work at home. Don't give up your studio. If you do,
you will suffer--as I did before I began my double life--from nervous
prostration. I was writing when I married--long-winded essays, sermons,
editorials, and arguments about nothing at all, simply built up from
the films of my imagination. The thousand-and-one distractions of