nonchalance, "I have still another account besides this one." "But why did you not tell me when I had the safe open, so that I could do it all at once?" "Oh, I thought that account and this one had nothing to do with each other!" In the same way a patient in a dispensary who has taken a liberal allowance of the time of the physician, retires to the waiting-room, and when the door is next opened advances to re-enter. Upon being told that his case has been disposed of, he observes, with delightful simplicity, "But I have got another different disease besides that one!"
An example of what seems to us immeasurable folly, is the common Chinese habit of postponing the treatment of diseases because the patient happens to be busy, or because the remedy would cost something. It is often considered cheaper to undergo severe and repeated attacks of intermittent fever, than to pay ten cash—about one cent—for a dose of quinia, morally certain to cure. We have seen countless cases of the gravest diseases sometimes nourished to the point where they became fatal simply to save time, when they might have been cured gratuitously.
A man living about half a mile from a foreign hospital, while away from home contracted some eye trouble, and waited in agony for more than two weeks after his return before coming for treatment, hoping each day that the pain would stop, instead of which, one eye was totally destroyed by a corneal ulcer.
Another patient, who had been under daily treatment for a deeply ulcerated neck, mentioned on the eighteenth day that his leg prevented his sleeping. Upon examination he was found to have there another ulcer about the size and depth of a teacup! When his neck was well he was intending to speak about his leg!
Many such phenomena of Chinese life may serve to remind one of a remark in one of the novels of Charles Reade, that
