ht there must be some mistake.

'Did you tell her I walked off a cliff seventy-five feet high?'

'Yes.'

'And struck a boulder at the bottom and bounced?'

'Yes.'

'And struck another one and bounced again?'

'Yes.'

'And struck another one and bounced yet again?'

'Yes.'

'And broke the boulders?'

'Yes.'

'That accounts for it; she is thinking of the boulders. Why didn't you
tell her I got hurt, too?'

'I did. I told her what you told me to tell her: that you were now
but an incoherent series of compound fractures extending from your
scalp-lock to your heels, and that the comminuted projections caused you
to look like a hat-rack.'

'And it was after this that she wished me to remember that there was
nothing the matter with me?'

'Those were her words.'

'I do not understand it. I believe she has not diagnosed the case with
sufficient care. Did she look like a person who was theorising, or did
she look like one who has fallen off precipices herself and brings to
the aid of abstract science the confirmation of personal experience?'

'Bitte?'

It was too large a contract for the Stubenmadchen's vocabulary; she
couldn't call the hand. I allowed the subject to rest there, and asked
for something to eat and smoke, and something hot to drink, and a basket
to pile my legs in, and another capable person to come and help me curse
the time away; but I could not have any of these things.

'Why?'

'She said you would need nothing at all.'

'But I am hungry and thirsty, and in desperate pain.'

'She said you would have these delusions, but must pay no attention
to them. She wants you to particularly remember that there are no such
things as hunger and thirst and pain.'

'She does, does she?'

'It is what she said.'

'Does she seem o be in full and functional possession of her
intellectual plant, such as it is?'

'Bitte?'

'Do they let her run at large, or do they tie her up?'

'Tie her up?'

'There, good-night, run along; you are a good girl, but your mental
Geschirr is not arranged for light and airy conversation. Leave me to my
delusions.'

II

It was a night of anguish, of course--at least I supposed it was, for
it had all the symptoms of it--but it passed at last, and the Christian
Scientist came, and I was glad. She was middle-aged, and large and bony
and erect, and had an austere face and a resolute jaw and a Roman beak
and was a widow in the third degree, and her name was Fuller.