insidious?] plant
was not revealed to me until after the harm was done. I awoke one
night to find my hands and wrists afflicted with so pestiferous an
itching that it verily seemed to me as if the points of ten thousand
thousand hot needles were being thrust into my cuticle. There are no
words capable of expressing how torturesome this affliction is; to my
physical suffering there was added a distinct mental disquietude
arising from a sense of injustice that nature, supposed to be so
benignant to her friends, should have punished me so grievously for
having sought to cultivate and foster her arts.

I was shocked, too, to discover that my misfortune awakened no feeling
of sympathy in others; nay, my neighbors seemed to regard it rather as
a joke that I, a scientist of no mean ability (if I _do_ say it
myself), should have fallen victim to the commonest and most vicious of
all destroyers of human happiness. The amount of badinage, sarcasm,
and irony indulged in by these unfeeling folk at the expense of
"Farmer" Baker (as they now jocosely dubbed me) would fill a royal
octavo volume. I assure you that I regarded this species of humor as
impertinent to the degree of atrocity.

My family physician, Dr. Hodges, prescribed several vials of pellets
which bore a striking resemblance to one another, but whose virtues I
was solemnly assured depended wholly upon my strict observance of the
_ordo_ of their administration internally, which _ordo_ may have been
simple and clear enough to Dr. Hodges, but was to me as intricate and
complicated as a Bradshaw railway guide. Furthermore, having
ascertained by artful inquiry what viands and beverages I particularly
liked, Dr. Hodges strictly forbade my indulgence in them, and such
articles of food and drink as I was particularly averse to be
recommended for my diet. Meanwhile I was meeting constantly with
people who had been afflicted with ivy poisoning, and these kind,
cheery souls encouraged me with recitals of their experiences. I was
told that it took seven years for ivy poison to get out of the system;
that every year during the ivy season (whatever that may mean) there
would be a recurrence of this pestiferous eruption, sometimes in one
part of the body, sometimes in another, and not unfrequently upon the
whole surface. There were, of course, numerous nostrums warranted to
allay the fiery tingling and maddening stinging of the malady, and, as
I cheerfully adopted every sugg