on't think so,' says I, 'look there,' says I, and I
prodooced the bile, which 'peared to me to be pretty good evidence.

"She looked at it and then says, as cool as you please, 'Well, what of
it?'

[Illustration: "'A WHAT?' SAYS SHE. 'A BILE?' SAYS I.'"]

"'Don't you call that a bile?' says I, 'and if you don't think it hurts
you'd better.' You see, bein' nearly crazy with the hurts of it, and her
so unconcernin', I thought she was workin' a guy on me. But she says,
'I see what you call a bile, and maybe you think it hurts, but I know it
don't. Why, what is it?' says she; 'it's nothing but a little lump of
red flesh. It don't hurt. It can't hurt. How can it? Flesh don't live
any more than wood or stone, and if it don't live, how can it feel? It's
you that feels and hurts, and you have made yourself believe it's this
little lump of red flesh, and you've gone and painted it and greased it
and wrapped it up and fooled with it when there's nothing the matter
with it, and everything the matter with you.' That's what she said,
looking me dead in the eyes."

Mr. Cinch had grown very much interested in Bob's account of this
peculiar conversation. As Bob went on he had screwed around in his
arm-chair, and had drawn his brow into a reflective knot.

"I don't know as I understand what that means, Bob," he observed,
cautiously.

"It took me a good while to get it through me," replied the manager,
"but I think I see what she was driving at. She means that a man's body
is just like any other matter and don't make feelings, and that's it's
his soul that does the feeling, and that when his soul feels bad he says
he has a bile or the colic or the rheumatism, and begins to put on
plasters and take pills when he ought not to do anything of the kind,
but ought to talk to her and get her to cure his soul. That's the way
she give it to me, anyhow. She talked here for half an hour. She said
that it was silly to set your feelings down to this or that place in
your body. She said she could talk to me awhile about the--er, let's
see, gravity, no, yes, gravi--oh, I know! about the gravitation of the
soul, and my feelings would get good and the bile go down."

"Oh, rats!" remarked Mr. Cinch.

"Well, I don't know, sir," replied Bob, doubtfully. "I don't know but
what I think there is something in it?"

"Stuff! Bob, how kin there be? Do you mean that she made out 'at she
could cure anything by just talking to you?"

"Not exactly; no sir.