me as Arletta," and before I could collect my wits sufficiently
to voice my agitated thoughts they passed from the room together.

CHAPTER XXIV

As I lay musing over the strange occurrences recorded in the previous
chapter, and wondering whether my entire life was a reality or merely a
peculiar dream, one of the white-capped nurses strode up to the side of
my bed and without the slightest warning roughly pushed a little glass
tube in my mouth. Not knowing whether she wanted me to swallow it or was
merely trying to puncture a hole in my tongue, I put it out again and
asked what she intended doing.

"Now look here," said she, in an irritated way, "I have about lost all
patience with you, and unless you do as I tell you hereafter I shall
have the orderly punish you again."

"But," said I, in amazement, "you have not mentioned yet what you would
have me do."

"I have told you fully a hundred times to put this thermometer under
your tongue and keep it there," replied she, exhibiting considerable
temper, as she viciously jammed it once more into my mouth and twisted
it under my tongue. "You are about the biggest chump that ever came into
this hospital," continued she, grasping my wrist as though she intended
breaking it and simultaneously taking my pulse and temperature.

A few moments later she jerked the thermometer from my mouth, glanced at
it hurriedly and then entered a record upon a chart suspended from the
head of my bed. Then calling one of the male attendants, she instructed
him to fill the tub preparatory to giving me an ice bath. This attendant
went to the corner of the room from whence he secured a bath tub on
wheels, which he pushed over to the side of my bed. The tub was already
partly filled with water, and I afterward learned that owing to the
laziness and filthiness of the attendants, the same water was often used
over and over again for the different typhoid patients. I observed that
this attendant, who was otherwise called an orderly, was about as
ignorant and degraded a specimen of humanity as a much boasted
civilization could possibly breed.

He was about six feet tall, round-shouldered, knock-kneed, and weighed
about two hundred pounds of flabby flesh, mostly covered by filthy
garments. His head was pyramidal in shape, and covered by a mass of
unkempt red hair. He had practically no forehead. His eyes were dull and
bloodshot. His nose was flat and bent to one side, and his whole face
was covered