qualified Percheron being
led out of Madison Square Garden. Then, without dropping in a penny,
he listened to my chest again.

"No glanders in our family, Doc," I said.

The consulting physician held up his forefinger within three inches of
my nose. "Look at my finger," he commanded.

"Did you ever try Pears'--" I began; but he went on with his test
rapidly.

"Now look across the bay. At my finger. Across the bay. At my finger.
At my finger. Across the bay. Across the bay. At my finger. Across the
bay." This for about three minutes.

He explained that this was a test of the action of the brain. It
seemed easy to me. I never once mistook his finger for the bay. I'll
bet that if he had used the phrases: "Gaze, as it were, unpreoccupied,
outward--or rather laterally--in the direction of the horizon,
underlaid, so to speak, with the adjacent fluid inlet," and "Now,
returning--or rather, in a manner, withdrawing your attention, bestow
it upon my upraised digit"--I'll bet, I say, that Henry James himself
could have passed the examination.

After asking me if I had ever had a grand uncle with curvature of the
spine or a cousin with swelled ankles, the two doctors retired to the
bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath tub for their consultation. I
ate an apple, and gazed first at my finger and then across the bay.

The doctors came out looking grave. More: they looked tombstones and
Tennessee-papers-please-copy. They wrote out a diet list to which I
was to be restricted. It had everything that I had ever heard of to
eat on it, except snails. And I never eat a snail unless it overtakes
me and bites me first.

"You must follow this diet strictly," said the doctors.

"I'd follow it a mile if I could get one-tenth of what's on it," I
answered.

"Of next importance," they went on, "is outdoor air and exercise. And
here is a prescription that will be of great benefit to you."

Then all of us took something. They took their hats, and I took my
departure.

I went to a druggist and showed him the prescription.

"It will be $2.87 for an ounce bottle," he said.

"Will you give me a piece of your wrapping cord?" said I.

I made a hole in the prescription, ran the cord through it, tied it
around my neck, and tucked it inside. All of us have a little
superstition, and mine runs to a confidence in amulets.

Of course there was nothing the matter with me, but I was very ill.
I couldn't work, sleep, eat, or bowl. The only