u think I can't
get at you if I like? I wait till you're asleep--I press this little
white button, hidden here in the stencilled pattern of the outer
wall--the mortise of the lock inside falls back silently against the
door-post--and I walk into the room whenever I like. The same plan is
pursued with the window. My capricious patient won't open it at night,
when he ought. I humor him again. 'Shut it, dear sir, by all means!' As
soon as he is asleep, I pull the black handle hidden here, in the corner
of the wall. The window of the room inside noiselessly opens, as you
see. Say the patient's caprice is the other way--he persists in opening
the window when he ought to shut it. Let him! by all means, let him!
I pull a second handle when he is snug in his bed, and the window
noiselessly closes in a moment. Nothing to irritate him, ladies and
gentlemen--absolutely nothing to irritate him! But I haven't done with
him yet. Epidemic disease, in spite of all my precautions, may
enter this Sanitarium, and may render the purifying of the sick-room
necessary. Or the patient's case may be complicated by other than
nervous malady--say, for instance, asthmatic difficulty of breathing. In
the one case, fumigation is necessary; in the other, additional oxygen
in the air will give relief. The epidemic nervous patient says, 'I won't
be smoked under my own nose!' The asthmatic nervous patient gasps with
terror at the idea of a chemical explosion in his room. I noiselessly
fumigate one of them; I noiselessly oxygenize the other, by means of a
simple Apparatus fixed outside in the corner here. It is protected by
this wooden casing; it is locked with my own key; and it communicates by
means of a tube with the interior of the room. Look at it!"

With a preliminary glance at Miss Gwilt, the doctor unlocked the lid of
the wooden casing, and disclosed inside nothing more remarkable than a
large stone jar, having a glass funnel, and a pipe communicating with
the wall, inserted in the cork which closed the mouth of it. With
another look at Miss Gwilt, the doctor locked the lid again, and asked,
in the blandest manner, whether his System was intelligible now?

"I might introduce you to all sorts of other contrivances of the same
kind," he resumed, leading the way downstairs; "but it would be only the
same thing over and over again. A nervous patient who always has his own
way is a nervous patient who is never worried; and a nervous patient who
is ne