’Nine months—­nine dull, sad months—­went by, and at last came the day of the Great Annual Sacrifice, when all the maidens of the tribe wash their faces and comb their hair.  With the first sweep of my comb out came the fatal fish-hook from where it had been all those months nestling, and I fell fainting into the arms of my remorseful father!  Groaning, he said, “We murdered him, and I shall never smile again!” He has kept his word.  Listen; from that day to this not a month goes by that I do not comb my hair.  But oh, where is the good of it all now!’

So ended the poor maid’s humble little tale—­whereby we learn that since a hundred million dollars in New York and twenty-two fish-hooks on the border of the Arctic Circle represent the same financial supremacy, a man in straitened circumstances is a fool to stay in New York when he can buy ten cents’ worth of fish-hooks and emigrate.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND THE BOOK OF MRS. EDDY

     ’It is the first time since the dawn-days of Creation that a Voice
     has gone crashing through space with such placid and complacent
     confidence and command.’

I

This last summer, when I was on my way back to Vienna from the Appetite-Cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight and broke some arms and legs and one thing or another, and by good luck was found by some peasants who had lost an ass, and they carried me to the nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low, thatch-roofed farm-houses, with apartments in the garret for the family, and a cunning little porch under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright-coloured flowers and cats; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room, separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition; and in the front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride of the house, the manure-pile.  That sentence is Germanic, and shows that I am acquiring that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of the language which enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.

There was a village a mile away, and a horse-doctor lived there, but there was no surgeon.  It seemed a bad outlook; mine was distinctly a surgery case.  Then it was remembered that a lady from Boston was summering in that village, and she was a Christian Science doctor and could cure anything.  So she was sent for.  It was night by this time, and she could not conveniently come, but sent word that it was no matter, there was no hurry, she would give me ‘absent treatment’ now, and come in the morning; meantime she begged me to make myself tranquil and comfortable and remember that there was nothing the matter with me.  I thought there must be some mistake.

‘Did you tell her I walked off a cliff seventy-five feet high?’

‘Yes.’

‘And struck a boulder at the bottom and bounced?’