to give one person (here a killing glance at
the president) notoriety!

The president, angrily cool, remarked
that what was said about her didn't hurt
her. She had never failed in what she
undertook, and didn't mean to.

The little fiery lady called upon the
meeting to mark the tone of arrogance and
tyranny the president adopted.

Cries of Order! Shame! Adjourn!
Adjourn!

The little fiery lady continued to speak
and gesticulate; confusion became anarchy;
the president stood firm as a rock amid the
storm; and, in a momentary lull, declared
the meeting adjourned.

The fashionables stared at the speakers
with mouths agape as they filed out of the
hall, and proceeded to the hotel, discussing
the disturbance warmly as they went.
They were the lions—or rather lionesses—
at the hotel that evening, where there was
an impromptu ball, the younger disciples
actually mixing in the dance, while the
elders looked on, half disapproving.

TWENTY-ONE MONTHS OF SILENCE.

IT happened on a summer evening, now
something more than two years ago, that the
surgeon of a certain regiment of high standing
then quartered at Chatham, was engaged in
his surgery in making some experiments of a
chemical sort, when one of the men belonging
to the regiment came to the door and desired to
have speech with him. This man was a private,
John Strong by name, lately enlisted, and not
remarkable hitherto as having in any way
shown himself to be different from the rest of
the rank and file of the corps. He had come
to the doctor, he said, to complain of the state
of his health. He felt so "queer" all over,
as he described it; could not settle down to any
occupation; was cold and hot by turns; had
pains all over his body and limbs, and was
altogether very much "out of sorts." After hearing
all this, and after having recourse to the
usual pulse-feeling, and tongue-inspecting
formula, the doctor wrote the man an order for
admission to the infirmary, and, telling him to
go to bed immediately, promised to visit him
when he made his usual rounds the first thing
next morning.

True to his promise, at an early hour on the
following day the regimental surgeon, whom
we will call Dr. Curzon, went to the infirmary,
and made his way to the bedside of the new
patient, expecting to find him suffering from
some slight feverish attack, or some other
trifling ailment, which a day or two's quiet,
and a dose of medicine, would quickly set
right. The aspect of the invalid as the
surgeon approached the bed, was even more
encouraging than he had expected, and Dr.
Curzon was on the point of giving him his
views on the subject of false alarms when,
happening to look more attentively at the patient
than he had done before, he observed that
Private Strong was gesticulating in a very
extraordinary manner, and especially twisting
his mouth and jaws into a variety of strange
and unearthly contortions, as if in an
ineffectual attempt to utter some articulate sounds,
which would not come forth. On examining
him yet more attentively, the doctor observed
that a sheet of paper was lying on his breast, on
which was written the following inscription: "I
HAVE HAD A FIT IN THE NIGHT, AND HAVE LOST THE
POWER OF SPEAKING."

Dr. Curzon had been an army-surgeon for
many a long year, and had come in contact with
numberless instances of deceit and shamming,
practised by soldiers with the view of obtaining
a discharge. He remembered how some of
them had, to his own certain knowledge,
assumed to be mad or idiotic; how others had
scratched raw places on their limbs, and bound
over them penny-pieces (in the days of the old
copper coinage) or even rubbed them with
phosphorus got from lucifer matches, in order
to make such abrasions resemble sores of a
dangerous and incurable sort. Then, besides,
there are books written on this subject full of
the most wonderful examples of feigning in the
matter of disease, such simulation being
sometimes engaged in with a view to some special
object, and sometimes (but this almost
invariably by women) with the desire of attracting
attention and winning a kind of renown.
Among men this simulating of disease—
malingering it is called in military phrase—is
resorted to with a specific intention. "The
sufferings imposed by malingerers on themselves,"
says Gavin on Feigned Diseases, "are infinitely
greater than any punishment a commanding
officer would dare to inflict; thus a soldier for
a period of eighteen months walked with his
body bent forward so that his arms reached
wthin two inches of the ground." In another a
discharge "was so eagerly coveted that a man
had his arm shot through to obtain it;" while
in another place, when treating of the extreme
difficulty of getting hold of any evidence by
means of which the malingerer may be criminated,
he expresses shrewdly enough his opinion
that "there is a kind of Freemasonry among
soldiers which is perhaps conducive to the
harmony of the barrack-room, but which by
preventing the exemplary from exposing the
worthless, and by holding up the informer as
an object of universal abhorrence, renders it
extremely difficult to obtain an accurate
knowledge of the various means of simulating
disease." Another medical authority proclaims
that he has "no doubt that methods have
been systematised for simulating disease, and
that these are preserved in many regiments
and handed over for the benefit of those who
may be inclined to make a trial of them."

Dr. Curzon questioned the other occupants of
the infirmary, and especially those who slept in
the beds which stood one on each side of that