Cases of attempted self-circumcision are not rarities, as people have some inexplicable idea that a self-inflicted cut is not as painful as one that is done by others. The writer well remembers being called to assist one of these domestic surgeons who had undertaken to circumcise himself with his wife's great scissors. The man had a very long but thin and narrow prepuce that had always been an annoyance to him. The writer had circumcised two of his children for the same malformation, and the father, seeing the benefit to these two, determined to share in the general benefit; but at the same time he arranged to do it all by himself, and give the family and the surgeon a sample of his courage and a simultaneous surprise party. Securing the scissors, he wended his way unperceived into the recesses of his wood-shed. The mental and physical anguish the poor man underwent, and what soliloquies he must have addressed to the rafters of the wood-shed while making up his mind and screwing up his physical courage for the last fell act with the scissors, can hardly be described, as, in all probability, they were of the most rambling and inconsistent order. At any rate, he must have reached a climax in time and grasped the fated prepuce with a revengeful glee, and, with all his powers concentrated in his good right hand, he must have closed the remorseless blades of the scissors on the unlucky prepuce. When the surgeon arrived at the scene of carnage, he was directed to the wood-shed, on the outskirts of which hovered the family, frantic with fear and apprehension; within, in the darkest corner, with wildly dilated eyes, and performing a fantastic _pas seul_, was a man with a huge pair of scissors dangling between his legs, warning all hands as they valued his life not to approach or lay a hand on him. He had shut the scissors down so that it clinched the thin prepuce, and there his courage and determination had forsaken him; he lost his presence of mind, and was not even able to take off the scissors; he had simply given one wild, blood-curdling yell--like the last winding notes from Roland's horn at Roncevalles--that had brought his family to the wood-shed-door, and they had then sent for a surgeon. New terrors here awaited the unlucky victim for self-circumcision. He dreaded lest the surgeon should accidentally have it enter his mind to finish the operation with the scissors, and in that case he would be helpless, as the surgeon would, undoubtedly, have a sure and tender hold of it. After executing a number of _pas a deux_ on the Magilton step, while the surgeon endeavored to reassure him and gain his confidence, promising to remove the scissors without inflicting any further harm, he was finally allowed to approach, and, while the patient assumed a Taglioni attitude on one foot, the other leg being extended at right angles with the body and his hands clawing the air, the scissors was removed. The patient,