But by that time I was feeling so almighty wretched that I could have paid a man to put a bullet through my head.

"There's no other way," I said to myself.
"Either you forget your religion and your miserable cowardice and get cut up, or it's you for the Golden Shore." So I set my teeth and journeyed to White Springs, and the Brothers had a look at my duodenum.
They saw that the darned thing wouldn't do, so they sidetracked it and made a noo route for my noo-trition traffic.

It was the cunningest piece of surgery since the Lord took a rib out of the side of our First Parent.

They've got a mighty fine way of charging, too, for they take five per cent of a man's income, and it's all one to them whether he's a Meat King or a clerk on twenty dollars a week.

I can tell you I took some trouble to be a very rich man last year.' All through the meal I sat in a kind of stupor.