, Williams had overturned a glass of
water on the table-cloth; and whenever he thinks of that glass of water,
his heart beats furiously, his palate goes dry, and there is a horribly
empty feeling in his stomach. Once, on some similar occasion, Williams
fell into animated talk with a beautiful young woman. He spoke so
rapidly and so well that the rest of the company dropped their chat and
gathered about him. It was five minutes, perhaps, before he was aware of
what was going on. That night Williams walked the streets in an agony
of remorse. The recollection of the incident comes back to him every now
and then, and, whether he is alone at his desk, or in the theatre, or in
a Broadway crowd, he groans with pain. Take away such memories of the
past, Williams told us, and he knew of nothing in life that he is afraid
of.

Gordon's was quite a different case. The group about the table burst out
laughing when Gordon assured us that above all things else in this world
he is afraid of elephants. He agreed with Bowman that in the latitude of
New York City and under the zooelogic conditions prevailing here, it was
a preposterous fear to entertain. Gordon lives in Harlem, and he
recognises clearly enough that the only elephant-bearing jungle in the
neighbourhood is Central Park, whence an animal would be compelled to
take a Subway train to One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, and lie in
wait for him as he came home in the twilight. But irrational or no,
there was the fact. To be quashed into pulp under one of those
girder-like front legs, Gordon felt must be abominable. To make matters
worse, Gordon has a young son who insists on being taken every Sunday
morning to see the animals; and of all attractions in the menagerie, the
child prefers the elephant house. He loves to feed the biggest of the
elephants, and to watch him place pennies in a little wooden box and
register the deposits on a bell. What Gordon suffers at such times, he
told us, can be neither imagined nor described.

My own story was received with sympathetic attention. I told them that
the one great terror of my life is a certain man who owes me a fairly
large sum of money, borrowed some years ago. Whenever we meet he insists
on recalling the debt and reminding me of how much the favour meant to
him at the time, and how he never ceases to think of it. Meeting him has
become a torture. I do my best to avoid him, and frequently succeed. But
often he will catch sight of