I undressed myself with my boy’s help, in one of the hospital rooms, and then arraying myself in my best suit of pajamas and an antique samurai robe which I use as a dressing gown, submitted myself to being given a dose of dazing opiate, which was to do its work in about fifteen minutes.  I then mounted a chair and was wheeled along the corridor to the elevator, stopping meantime to say “adieu” to my dear ones, who would somehow or other insist upon saying “good-bye,” which is a different word.  I was not to be given the usual anesthetic, because my heart had been cutting up some didos, so I must take a local anesthetic which Was to be administered by a very celebrated Frenchman.  I need not tell you that this whole performance was managed with considerable eclat, and Doctor Will Mayo, probably the first surgeon of the world, was to use the knife; and in the gallery looking on were Doctor Finney, of Johns Hopkins, Doctor Billings, of Chicago, Doctor Vaughan of the Michigan University, and others.  On the whole, it was what the society reporter would call a recherche affair.  The local anesthetic consists of morphine and scopolamin.  It is administered directly by needle to the nerves that lead to those particular parts which are to be affected by the operation.  This I watched myself with the profoundest interest.  It was painful, somewhat, but it was done with the niceness and precision that make this new method of anesthesia a real work of art.  I should think that the Japanese, with their very rare power at embroidery, might come to be past masters in this work.  There were some insertions very superficial and some extremely deep.  Over the operator’s head, there were a half dozen heads peering intently at each move he made, while the patient himself was free to lift his head and look down and see just what was being done.  I did not test myself, as I should have, to see whether I was paralyzed in any part.

Just when this performance came to a head, Doctor Mayo came in and said, “Well, I am going in for something.”  I said, “That’s right, and I hope you will get it.”

His statement did not conclusively prove confidence that he would find the cause of my trouble by going in. ...  I knew there could be no such definiteness, but I said to myself, “He will get it, if it’s there.”

For two days I had had knowledge that this operation was to take place at this time, and my nerves had not been just as good as they should have been.  Those men who sleep twelve hours perfectly before being electrocuted have evidently led more tranquil lives than I have, or have less concern as to the future.  Ah, now I was to know the great secret!  For forty years I had been wondering, wondering.  Often I had said to myself that I should summon to my mind when this moment came, some words that would be somewhat a synthesis of my philosophy.  Socrates said to those who stood by, after he had drunk the hemlock, “No evil can befall a good man, whether