he be alive or dead.”  I don’t know how far from that we have gone in these twenty-four hundred years.  The apothegm, however, was not apposite to me, because it involved a declaration that I was a good man, and I don’t know anyone who has the right so to appreciate himself.  And I had come to the conclusion that perhaps the best statement of my creed could be fitted into the words, “I accept,” which to me meant that if in the law of nature my individual spirit was to go back into the great Ocean of Spirits, my one duty was to conform.  “Lead Kindly Light” was all the gospel I had.  I accepted.  I made pretense to put out my hand in submission and lay there.

“All through, doctor?”

“Yes, doctor.”

“Very well, we will proceed.”

And I was gradually pushed through the hall into the operating room.  The process there was lightning-like.  I was in torture.

“Lift me up, lift me up.”

“What for?”

“I have one of those angina pains and I must ease it by getting up and taking some nitro.”

That had been my practice, but I did not reason that never before had the pain come on my right side.

“Give him a whiff of ether.”  The tenderest arms stole around my head and the softest possible voice—­Ulysses must have heard it long ago—­“Now do take a deep breath.”  I resisted.  I had been told that I would see the performance.

“Please do, breathe very deeply—­just one good deep breath.”  That pain was burning the side out of me.  I tried to get my hand up to my side.  Of course it was tied down.  I swore.

“Oh Christ!  This is terrible.”

“It will stop if you will reach for a big breath,”—­and I resigned myself.  Men who are given the third degree have no stronger will than mine.  I knew I was helpless.  I must go through.  I must surrender to that Circean voice.

I heard the doctor in a commonplace monotone say, “This is an unusual case—­“—­the rest of this sentence I never heard.

There was a long ray of gray light leading from my bed to my door.  I had opened my eyes.  “I had not died.”  I had come through the Valley.

“I wonder what he got.”

In the broad part of the ray was my wife smiling, and stretching out to that unreachable door were others whom I recognized, all smiling.  Things were dim, but my mind seemed definite.

“What did he get?” I had expected eternal mysteries to be unraveled.  Either I would know, or not know, and I would not know that I would not know.

“He got a gall-bladder filled with stones and a bad appendix, and now you are to lie still.”

Then to this the drama had come, the drama beyond all dramas—­a handful of brownish secretions and a couple of pieces of morbid flesh!!  Ah me!