he rolled in a flat litter on wheels and stretched me on it, and
covered me up with a white tablecloth, just as though I had been
cold Sunday-night supper, and we started for the operating-room
at the top of the building; but before we started I lit a large
black cigar, as Gen. U. S. Grant used to do when he went into
battle. I wished by this to show how indifferent I was. Maybe
he fooled somebody, but I do not believe I possess the same powers
of simulation that Grant had. He must have been a very remarkable
man--Grant must.

The orderly and the nurse trundled me out into the hall and loaded
me into an elevator, which was to carry us up to the top of the
hospital. Several other nurses were already in the elevator. As
we came aboard one of them remarked that it was a fine day. A
fine day for what? She did not finish the sentence.

Everybody wore a serious look. Inside of myself I felt pretty
serious too--serious enough for ten or twelve. I had meant to
fling off several very bright, spontaneous quips on the way to
the table. I thought them out in advance, but now, somehow, none
of them seemed appropriate. Instinctively, as it were, I felt
that humor was out of place here.

I never knew an elevator to progress from the third floor of a
building to the ninth with such celerity as this one on which we
were traveling progressed. Personally I was in no mood for haste.
If there was anyone else in all that great hospital who was in a
particular hurry to be operated on I was perfectly willing to wait.
But alas, no! The mechanism of the elevator was in perfect order--
entirely too perfect. No accident of any character whatsoever