I will relate an experience which shows how far this truth extends. An elderly lady, whom I had known for nearly twenty-five years at the time this incident happened, was in the habit each spring of coming from New York, where she lived, to Boston, where she used to live, to make a round of visits among her friends. While still on one of these visits she telephoned me one day to come and see her. As I entered the house where she was staying, I was met, as I have been met so many times, by a member of the household, who, with finger on lip and every precaution for silence, beckoned me into a side room and proceeded to tell me "what nobody else must know." It was something like this: That my friend the old lady had begun the first of her round of visits about a month before this. On that first visit it had become pretty obvious to her friends that she was mentally queer. She was not a millionaire, yet she was spending and giving away an extraordinary amount of money. She was ordinarily a person of quiet habits and not prone to hurry about, but now she was making the dust fly all the time. She was ordinarily modest. She had now become boastful. The first friend with whom she stayed believed, as people usually do, that it would be dangerous to tell her anything about her mental condition, yet found it impossible to keep her in the house. Therefore the hostess made the excuse that she had a maid leaving and could not really keep a visitor just now. Would my friend mind moving on to the next visit? She moved on to Number Two; naturally the same thing happened there. So the second hostess passed her along to Number Three. She was with Number Four at the time when she called me. All this was given me in the strictest secrecy in the little anteroom close to the front door. My informant then tried to pledge me not to tell the old lady the truth, fearing an outbreak of violence. But as I had a good while ago sworn off all forms of lying, I refused to make any such promise. I went upstairs to see the patient. She poured out to me one of the most pitiful stories I ever heard--the same story just given, but from her own point of view. So far as she could see, her friends were all playing her false in some way, or losing their affection for her. She knew that it was not by accident that one friend after another had politely shown her the door. Something was being concealed from her. What could it be? She was really worn out, she said with worry and sorrow about it.