e mysteries of viscerology, it confers even
_more_ stateliness upon its _ex_-possessor!

Alas, what would you! Why is the stomach such a libertine and outlaw in
England, and so highly respectable in the United States? No Englishman
of good breeding, save he be far gone in liquor, ever mentions his
stomach in the presence of women, clergymen, or the Royal Family. To
avoid the necessity--for Englishmen, too, are subject to the colic--he
employs various far-fetched euphemisms, among them, the poetical Little
Mary. No such squeamishness is known in America. The American discusses
his stomach as freely as he discusses his business. More, he regards its
name with a degree of respect verging upon reverence--and so he uses it
as a euphemism for the whole region from the diaphragm to the pelvic
arch. Below his heart he has only a stomach and a vermiform appendix.

In the Englishman that large region is filled entirely by his liver, at
least in polite conversation. He never mentions his kidneys save to his
medical adviser, but he will tell even a parlor maid that he is feeling
liverish. "Sorry, old chap; I'm not up to it. Been seedy for a
fortnight. Touch of liver, I dessay. Never felt quite fit since I came
Home. Bones full of fever. Damned old liver always kicking up. Awfully
sorry, old fellow. Awsk me again. Glad to, pon my word." But never the
American! Nay, the American keeps his liver for his secret thoughts.
Hobnailed it may be, and the most interesting thing within his
frontiers, but he would blush to mention it to a lady.

Myself intensely ignorant of anatomy, and even more so of the punctilio,
I yet attempted, one rainy day, a roster of the bodily parts in the
order of their respectability. Class I was small and exclusive; when I
had put in the heart, the brain, the hair, the eyes and the vermiform
appendix, I had exhausted all the candidates. Here were the five
aristocrats, of dignity even in their diseases--appendicitis, angina
pectoris, aphasia, acute alcoholism, astigmatism: what a row of a's!
Here were the dukes, the cardinals, nay, the princes of the blood. Here
were the supermembers; the beyond-parts.

In Class II I found a more motley throng, led by the collar-bone on the
one hand and the tonsils on the other. And in Class III--but let me
present my classification and have done:

CLASS II

Collar-bone
Stomach (American)
Liver (English)
Bronchial tubes
Arms (excluding elbows)
Tonsils
Vo