oride._ THE
CLERGYMAN, _after pocketing it, washes his hands with green soap._ THE
BRIDESMAIDS _proceed to clean up the room with the remaining bichloride.
This done, they and_ THE CLERGYMAN _go out. As soon as they are gone,
the operating table is pushed back into place by an orderly, a patient
is brought in, and a surgeon proceeds to cut off his leg._)

_X.--TALES OF THE MORAL AND PATHOLOGICAL_

_X.--Tales of the Moral and Pathological_

_I.--The Rewards of Science_

Once upon a time there was a surgeon who spent seven years perfecting an
extraordinarily delicate and laborious operation for the cure of a rare
and deadly disease. In the process he wore out $400 worth of knives and
saws and used up $6,000 worth of ether, splints, guinea pigs, homeless
dogs and bichloride of mercury. His board and lodging during the seven
years came to $2,875. Finally he got a patient and performed the
operation. It took eight hours and cost him $17 more than his fee of
$20....

One day, two months after the patient was discharged as cured, the
surgeon stopped in his rambles to observe a street parade. It was the
annual turnout of Good Hope Lodge, No. 72, of the Patriotic Order of
American Rosicrucians. The cured patient, marching as Supreme Worthy
Archon, wore a lavender baldric, a pea-green sash, an aluminum helmet
and scarlet gauntlets, and carried an ormolu sword and the blue
polka-dot flag of a rear-admiral....

With a low cry the surgeon jumped down a sewer and was seen no more.

_II.--The Incomparable Physician_

The eminent physician, Yen Li-Shen, being called in the middle of the
night to the bedside of the rich tax-gatherer, Chu Yi-Foy, found his
distinguished patient suffering from a spasm of the liver. An
examination of the pulse, tongue, toe-nails, and hair-roots revealing
the fact that the malady was caused by the presence of a multitude of
small worms in the blood, the learned doctor forthwith dispatched his
servant to his surgery for a vial of gnats' eyes dissolved in the saliva
of men executed by strangling, that being the remedy advised by Li
Tan-Kien and other high authorities for the relief of this painful and
dangerous condition.

When the servant returned the patient was so far gone that Cheyne-Stokes
breathing had already set in, and so the doctor decided to administer
the whole contents of the vial--an heroic dose, truly, for it has been
immemorially held that even so little as the amount that