here between twenty and forty. He wore
heliotrope socks, but he looked like Napoleon. I liked him immensely.

"Now," said he, "I am going to show you the effect of alcohol upon
your circulation." I think it was "circulation" he said; though it may
have been "advertising."

He bared my left arm to the elbow, brought out a bottle of whiskey,
and gave me a drink. He began to look more like Napoleon. I began to
like him better.

Then he put a tight compress on my upper arm, stopped my pulse with
his fingers, and squeezed a rubber bulb connected with an apparatus on
a stand that looked like a thermometer. The mercury jumped up and down
without seeming to stop anywhere; but the doctor said it registered
two hundred and thirty-seven or one hundred and sixty-five or some
such number.

"Now," said he, "you see what alcohol does to the blood-pressure."

"It's marvellous," said I, "but do you think it a sufficient test?
Have one on me, and let's try the other arm." But, no!

Then he grasped my hand. I thought I was doomed and he was saying
good-bye. But all he wanted to do was to jab a needle into the end of
a finger and compare the red drop with a lot of fifty-cent poker chips
that he had fastened to a card.

"It's the haemoglobin test," he explained. "The colour of your blood
is wrong."

"Well," said I, "I know it should be blue; but this is a country of
mix-ups. Some of my ancestors were cavaliers; but they got thick with
some people on Nantucket Island, so--"

"I mean," said the doctor, "that the shade of red is too light."

"Oh," said I, "it's a case of matching instead of matches."

The doctor then pounded me severely in the region of the chest. When
he did that I don't know whether he reminded me most of Napoleon or
Battling or Lord Nelson. Then he looked grave and mentioned a string
of grievances that the flesh is heir to--mostly ending in "itis." I
immediately paid him fifteen dollars on account.

"Is or are it or some or any of them necessarily fatal?" I asked.
I thought my connection with the matter justified my manifesting a
certain amount of interest.

"All of them," he answered cheerfully. "But their progress may be
arrested. With care and proper continuous treatment you may live to be
eighty-five or ninety."

I began to think of the doctor's bill. "Eighty-five would be
sufficient, I am sure," was my comment. I paid him ten dollars more on
account.

"The first thing to do," he said, with renewed a