rteen dishes in the bill are each and all too delicate for
its needs. I ask you as a favour to restrain yourself and not call for
them.'

'Restrain myself, is it? Give yourself no uneasiness. You are going to
save money by me. The idea of coaxing a sick man's appetite back with
this buzzard-fare is clear insanity.'

I said it with bitterness, for I felt outraged by this calm, cold talk
over these heartless new engines of assassination. The doctor looked
grieved, but not offended. He laid the bill of fare of the commode at my
bed's head, 'so that it would be handy,' and said:

'Yours is not the worst case I have encountered, by any means; still
it is a bad one and requires robust treatment; therefore I shall be
gratified if you will restrain yourself and skip down to No. 15 and
begin with that.'

Then he left me and I began to undress, for I was dog-tired and very
sleepy. I slept fifteen hours and woke up finely refreshed at ten the
next morning. Vienna coffee! It was the first thing I thought of--that
unapproachable luxury--that sumptuous coffee-house coffee, compared with
which all other European coffee and all American hotel coffee is mere
fluid poverty. I rang, and ordered it; also Vienna bread, that delicious
invention. The servant spoke through the wicket in the door and
said--but you know what he said. He referred me to the bill of fare. I
allowed him to go--I had no further use for him.

After the bath I dressed and started for a walk, and got as far as the
door. It was locked on the outside. I rang, and the servant came and
explained that it was another rule. The seclusion of the patient was
required until after the first meal. I had not been particularly anxious
to get out before; but it was different now. Being locked in makes a
person wishful to get out. I soon began to find it difficult to put in
the time. At two o'clock I had been twenty-six hours without food. I
had been growing hungry for some time; I recognised that I was not only
hungry now, but hungry with a strong adjective in front of it. Yet I was
not hungry enough to face the bill of fare.

I must put in the time somehow. I would read and smoke. I did it; hour
by hour. The books were all of one breed--shipwrecks; people lost in
deserts; people shut up in caved-in mines; people starving in besieged
cities. I read about all the revolting dishes that ever famishing
men had stayed their hunger with. During the first hours these things
nauseated