nimation, "is to find
a sanitarium where you will get a complete rest for a while, and allow
your nerves to get into a better condition. I myself will go with you
and select a suitable one."

So he took me to a mad-house in the Catskills. It was on a bare
mountain frequented only by infrequent frequenters. You could see
nothing but stones and boulders, some patches of snow, and scattered
pine trees. The young physician in charge was most agreeable. He gave
me a stimulant without applying a compress to the arm. It was luncheon
time, and we were invited to partake. There were about twenty inmates
at little tables in the dining room. The young physician in charge
came to our table and said: "It is a custom with our guests not
to regard themselves as patients, but merely as tired ladies and
gentlemen taking a rest. Whatever slight maladies they may have are
never alluded to in conversation."

My doctor called loudly to a waitress to bring some phosphoglycerate
of lime hash, dog-bread, bromo-seltzer pancakes, and nux vomica tea
for my repast. Then a sound arose like a sudden wind storm among pine
trees. It was produced by every guest in the room whispering loudly,
"Neurasthenia!"--except one man with a nose, whom I distinctly heard
say, "Chronic alcoholism." I hope to meet him again. The physician in
charge turned and walked away.

An hour or so after luncheon he conducted us to the workshop--say
fifty yards from the house. Thither the guests had been conducted by
the physician in charge's understudy and sponge-holder--a man with
feet and a blue sweater. He was so tall that I was not sure he had a
face; but the Armour Packing Company would have been delighted with
his hands.

"Here," said the physician in charge, "our guests find relaxation
from past mental worries by devoting themselves to physical
labour--recreation, in reality."

There were turning-lathes, carpenters' outfits, clay-modelling
tools, spinning-wheels, weaving-frames, treadmills, bass drums,
enlarged-crayon-portrait apparatuses, blacksmith forges, and
everything, seemingly, that could interest the paying lunatic guests
of a first-rate sanitarium.

"The lady making mud pies in the corner," whispered the physician in
charge, "is no other than--Lula Lulington, the authoress of the novel
entitled 'Why Love Loves.' What she is doing now is simply to rest her
mind after performing that piece of work."

I had seen the book. "Why doesn't she do it by writin