been awarded several medals, and of whom everyone said, “Now there's a
man of both intellect and heart.”
Quite befuddled was the poor interne when he popped out of the heart of
the last person in the front row. He could not get his thoughts in order, and
he supposed that his strong imagination must have run away with him.
“Merciful heavens,” he groaned, “I must be well on the road to the
madhouse. And it's so outrageously hot in here that the blood is rushing to
my head.” Suddenly he recalled what had happened the night before, when
he had jammed his head between the bars of the hospital fence. “That must
be what caused it,” he decided. “I must do something before it is too late. A
Russian bath might be the very thing. I wish I were on the top shelf right
now.”
No sooner said, than there he lay on the top shelf of the steam bath. But
he was fully dressed, down to his shoes and galoshes. He felt the hot drops
of condensed steam fall upon him from the ceiling.
“ Hey!” he cried, and jumped down to take a shower. The attendant cried
out too when he caught sight of a fully dressed man in the steam room.
However, the interne had enough sense to pull himself together and
whisper, “I'm just doing this because of a bet.”
But the first thing he did when he got back to his room was to put hot
plasters on his neck and his back, to draw out the madness.
Next morning he had a blistered back and that was all he got out of the
galoshes of Fortune.
V. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE COPYING CLERK
The watchman-you remember him-happened to remember those galoshes
he had found, and that he must have been wearing them when they took his
body to the hospital. He came by for them, and as neither the lieutenant nor
anyone else in East Street laid claim to them, he turned them in at the police
station.
