I reached the hospital on a Sunday morning, and was promptly carried upstairs to a private ward.  Though my temperature was now as much as 104 deg., and my faculties were naturally not at their quickest, I could not help noticing the cheery look of the ward.  There were flowers on the tables, the patients were obviously well cared for, everything was scrupulously clean, and the British nurses looked both efficient and attractive.  The scrupulous cleanliness, together with the latest and most approved methods of treatment, were indeed a feature of the hospital in all its aspects.

It was a short time afterwards that one of the doctors, after carefully diagnosing my case, ordered me to the medical ward, where there would be greater facilities for giving me a course of baths.  In the medical ward my treatment was as kind and as careful as formerly, but my new surroundings had for the moment a rather depressing effect.  I was just able to realise that the cases around me were more serious than in the private ward, and that both doctors and nurses were more grave and intent on their work.  I was soon, however, to become delirious again, and for the next few days was more or less oblivious to my environment.  After a short time I became more alive to what was happening around me.  We typhoid patients had four cold baths daily, and those patients who in their normal existence were unaccustomed to one warm bath a week were somewhat inclined to rebel.  This was amusing.  My sense of humour was reviving.  The company here was certainly more mixed than in the private ward—­consisting as it did of every class and of every nationality, from Montenegrin to Turk, but it was not on that account any the less entertaining.  Two or three berths away a brawny Scot of monster dimensions, who was convalescent after an acute attack of rheumatism, would every night before getting into bed say, with a certain naivete, and without any sense of proportion, that he was going to his “little nest.”  And yet people accuse Scotsmen of a lack of imagination.  On either side of me lay a typhoid patient—­each delirious.  The one on my right hand imagined he was at home drinking beer in Plymouth, and the one on my left, an Italian workman, would persistently call for his boots.  It seemed he wished to return to his work and did not think any other article of dress necessary.  The weather at the time was certainly hot, and this may have suggested such a daring flaunting of the conventions.  It is curious that among typhoid patients this illusion of doing some action without sufficient clothing is rather prevalent.  I myself at one time imagined that I had been discharged from the hospital with only the top of my pyjamas and a travelling rug.  As I would carry the travelling rug on my arm, it scarcely compensated for the lack of other apparel.  Through all these vagaries on the part of the patients the nurses remained kind and careful as ever.  This was especially conspicuous