from me! Oh! why had I not used some
deliberation before thus consummating the desperate deed?

To the telephone I rushed. I soon had the doctor, and this was our
conversation:--

_Myself_--"Doctor, come at once; by mistake I swallowed all the medicine
you gave me. Do hurry, doctor."

_Doctor_--"Did you take the entire contents of the bottle?"

_Myself_--"Every one--over a hundred--do hurry, doctor."

_Doctor_--"No alarm, then. You have swallowed so many that they will
neutralize one another and act as an antidote. Calm yourself and you will
be all right!"

I thought more than ever that this was surely a mysterious remedy.

A few weeks later I chanced to remember that in my ceaseless rounds of
trying to regain my health and retain such as I had, no osteopathic doctor
had ever been favored by a call from me. I went to consult with one
post-haste. The osteopath wanted to pull my limbs both literally and
metaphorically. He discovered that I had a rib depressed and digging into
my lungs; also a dislocation of my atlas, which is a bone at the top of my
spinal column. He was not sure but that one of my cranial bones was
pressing upon one of the large nerve centers in my brain. My symptoms were
all reflex from these troubles.

I did not decide upon an immediate course of osteopathic treatment, as I
had been struck by something new. I will tell about it another chapter; it
makes me so tired to write so much at one time. That accounts for these
short chapters all along.

CHAPTER XVI.

TAKES A COURSE IN A MEDICAL COLLEGE.

Yes, I had thought of something entirely new. I would take a medical
course and would then know for myself whether I suffered from a
complication of diseases or whether it was true, as many had tried to
convince me, that there was nothing the matter with me. A medical
education, too, would be an embellishment that every one could not boast
of. I had the necessary time and means to take a course in medicine,
having no one dependent upon me. If there had been family cares on my
hands, the case would have been different. So I matriculated in a St.
Louis medical college during the middle of a term and began the study of
the healing art.

Now, reader, please do not be shocked too badly if, in this connection, I
mention a few slightly uncanny things. I have always noticed, however,
that most people do not raise much of a fuss over a diminutive shocking
semi-occasionally, provided the act comes