e belief
that a few overripe patients will fall out. I alone--I, me, myself--am
the present candidate!"

However, I refrained from making this protest audibly. I judged she was
only going according to the ritual; and as she had a printed card, with
blanks in it ready to be filled out with details regarding the remote
members of the family connection, I humored her along.

When I could not remember something she wished to know concerning an
ancestor I supplied her with thrilling details culled from the field of
fancy. When the card was entirely filled up she sent me back to my old
place to wait. I waited and waited, breeding fresh ailments all the
time. I had started out with one symptom; now if I had one I had a
million and a half. I could feel goose flesh sprouting out all over me.
If I had been taller I might have had more, but not otherwise. Such is
the power of the human imagination when the surroundings are favorable
to its development.

Time passed; to me it appeared that nearly all the time there was passed
and that we were getting along toward the shank-end of the Christian era
mighty fast. I was afraid my turn would come next and afraid it would
not. Perhaps you know this sensation. You get it at the dentist's, and
when you are on the list of after-dinner speakers at a large banquet,
and when you are waiting for the father of the Only Girl in the World
to make up his mind whether he is willing to try to endure you as a
son-in-law.

Then some more time passed.

One by one my companions, obeying a command, passed out through the door
at the back, vanishing out of my life forever. None of them returned. I
was vaguely wondering whether Doctor Z buried his dead on the premises
or had them removed by a secret passageway in the rear, when a young
woman in a nurse's costume tapped me on the shoulder from behind.

I jumped. She hid a compassionate smile with her hand and told me that
the doctor would see me now.

As I rose to follow her--still clinging with the drowning man's grip
of desperation to my hat and my umbrella--I was astonished to note by a
glance at the calendar on the wall that this was still the present date.
I thought it would be Thursday of next week at the very least.

Doctor Z also wore whiskers, carefully pointed up by an expert hedge
trimmer. He sat at his desk, surrounded by freewill offerings from
grateful patients and by glass cases containing other things he had
taken away from them whe