She removed the tray, then set to work getting me ready for the night. She unfastened my shoes, took them off, unbuttoned me and shunted me into a suit of hospital pajamas, as if I were already an invalid. It was hours before my usual bedtime, but I made no protest. In fact my powers of opposition had been worn down to a point where it no longer seemed worth while objecting to anything. Once before I had been in a hospital a few days and learned my lesson in submissiveness. In a hospital one soon learns to obey everybody, for every attendant, even down to the meanest orderly, is clothed with an authority not to be questioned by any invalid intruder. A man may be a czar in his own home (that is, if he’s single), but let him fall into the clutches of the doctors, nurses and hospital authorities and he becomes the most humble milk-fed subject on earth. The moment he undertakes to assert himself he is sure to run afoul of some iron-clad rule, and like a captive bird beating its head against the bars of its cage he learns the utter futility of resistance. I lay there trying to chirk up my spirits by contemplating the future joys of convalescence--when a fellow can sit up in an easy chair with a consciousness of restored sovereignty over himself; when he can fearlessly declare his mind and tell them all to go to the--but just then the nurse reminded me it was seven o’clock, and she was leaving for the night. She surprised me by saying the _barber_ would soon be in. “But I haven’t sent for any barber--I don’t want one.” “No, but that’s all been arranged for you. Good night.” And out she went. It all reminded me of the newspaper accounts where we read of people being fed, shaved and groomed for hanging or electrocution at daybreak, except that they don’t have to take castor oil; and they are always given plenty to eat. Shortly after the nurse left the barber arrived. He unwrapped his kit and took out an old-fashioned razor. “I’ve come to shave you.” “Thank you, but I’m not an invalid, and I always shave myself.” “Yes--your face--but that ain’t where they’re goin’ to operate,” he laughed. He cupped his palms and blew his breath on them.--“I’ll have to thaw the frost out of these joints before I can hold a razor.” He was a youngish man and went about his task in a clumsy way. He shaved--or rather scraped--my back from the waist down to the hips, talking volubly the while. Then having turned me over, as he was working industriously on the most ticklish part of my midsection he confided to me that he was new at the barber business. He said he had tried his hand on three or four ex-patients in an “undertaker’s shop,” but I was the second “live one” he had ever “worked on.”