all that you said of it--and more. It did not even permit me to
collapse gracefully--or to choose my public. Your other man had a
policeman, hadn't he?

Here I am, stranded upon a sofa from which I cannot get up and
detained indefinitely upon a mountain from which I cannot get down.
My nurse (I have a nurse) refuses to admit the mountain. She insists
upon referring to this dizzy height as "just above sea-level" and
declares that the precipitous ascent thereto is "a slight grade."
Otherwise she is quite sane.

But sanity is more than I feel justified in claiming for anyone else
in this household. There is Li Ho, for instance. Well, I'm not
certain about Li Ho. He may be Chinese-sane. My nurse says he is.
But I have no doubts at all about my host. He is so queer that I
sometimes wonder if he is not a figment. Perhaps I imagine him. If
so, my imagination is going strong. What I seem to see is a little
old man in a frock coat so long that his legs (like those of the
Queen of Spain) are negligible. He has a putty colored face (so
blurred that I keep expecting him to rub it out altogether), white
hair, pale blue eyes--and an umbrella.

Yesterday, attempting to establish cordial relations, I asked him
why the umbrella. He had a fit right on the spot?

Let me explain about the fits. When his daughter just said, "Father
will have a fit," I thought she spoke in a Pickwickian sense,
meaning, "Father will experience annoyance." But when I heard him
having it, I realized that she had probably been quite literal. When
father has a fit he bangs his umbrella to the floor and jumps on it.