"No, of course not," said the inspector.

"I am the biggest liar on the Mississippi," Mark Twain told him.

93. Do task 12 on page 127.

94*. Write a short report (about 10 sentences) "My Meals Yesterday".

Lesson 47

95. Read your report (exercise 94).

96. Read the extract from the novel by Jerome K. Jerome "Three

Men in a Boat".

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch of hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began too indolently study diseases, generally. I forgot which was the first distemper I plunged into — some fearful, devastating scourge, I know — and, before I had glanced half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.

I sat for a while frozen with horror; and then in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever — read the symptoms — discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it — wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus's Dance — found, as I expected, that I had that too — began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically — read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I ploded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.

I sat and pondered. I thought what an interesting case I must be from a medical point of view, what an acquisition I should be to a class! Students would have no need to "walk the hospitals" if they had me. I was a hospital in myself. All they need do would be to walk round me, and, after that, take their diploma.