ce in the hands of these handlers of the
scalpel, treating him like an African savage. He took some days to
consider the matter. On the next day he informed M. Louis, his first
surgeon in ordinary, that he had decided on submitting to the operation,
and the day and hour were fixed. The royal circumcision, however, never
took place, as it is most likely that in the privacy of his chamber his
Majesty worked, like many a plebeian or man of low degree had done
before him and has done since, to bring a refractory prepuce to terms.
The king was somewhat of a mechanic, as his skill as a locksmith has
passed into history; so that it is not unlikely that, with what little
information he had on the subject, he managed to sufficiently dilate, by
scarification and stretching, the preputial opening, as from the year
1778 the queen had three children.

Cases of attempted self-circumcision are not rarities, as people have
some inexplicable idea that a self-inflicted cut is not as painful as
one that is done by others. The writer well remembers being called to
assist one of these domestic surgeons who had undertaken to circumcise
himself with his wife's great scissors. The man had a very long but thin
and narrow prepuce that had always been an annoyance to him. The writer
had circumcised two of his children for the same malformation, and the
father, seeing the benefit to these two, determined to share in the
general benefit; but at the same time he arranged to do it all by
himself, and give the family and the surgeon a sample of his courage and
a simultaneous surprise party. Securing the scissors, he wended his way
unperceived into the recesses of his wood-shed. The mental and physical
anguish the poor man underwent, and what soliloquies he must have
addressed to the rafters of the wood-shed while making up his mind and
screwing up his physical courage for the last fell act with the
scissors, can hardly be described, as, in all probability, they were of
the most rambling and inconsistent order. At any rate, he must have
reached a climax in time and grasped the fated prepuce with a revengeful
glee, and, with all his powers concentrated in his good right hand, he
must have closed the remorseless blades of the scissors on the unlucky
prepuce. When the surgeon arrived at the scene of carnage, he was
directed to the wood-shed, on the outskirts of which hovered the family,
frantic with fear and apprehension; within, in the darkest corner, wit