I have heard persons say that an amputated limb still feels as if it were on—is that so?
How do you account for that?
All these questions, dear public, I have answered thousands of times, and may have to answer thousands of times yet, if my miserable existence is lengthened out for many years. Imagine how it must torment me! The same old questions, to me long since devoid of interest, I must meekly answer, over and again, day by day, week by week, year by year! How would you like to commence and repeat the A B C’s five thousand times every day, as long as you live?—Be pleasant, wouldn’t it?
But this is not all. After the affable stranger has asked all the ridiculous questions he can think of, he commences, without being solicited for a narrative, and entertains (?) me with a glowing (?) account of the army experience of one of his relatives—his son, nephew, cousin, or wife’s uncle’s brother’s cousin, and I must patiently listen. He, poor fellow, goes the story, was wounded, too: arm or leg nearly torn off, barely hanging by a bit of the hide. Doctors wanted to carve it off. He wouldn’t let ’em. But they said he’d die unless his limb was amputated. Said he’d die all in one piece, then, and save the trouble of digging two graves: wasn’t going to die a piece at a time. Doctors said they knew best and limb must come off. “Hero” declared they didn’t, and that it shouldn’t be cut off, and, moreover, he’d shoot ’em if they tried it. Hence, limb left on. Patient got well, although Doctors said wouldn’t live a day, “and to-day,” continues the narrator, “the limb is sounder and stronger than before it was wounded.” I have heard ten thousand such stories told of persons I never knew, never saw, and never heard of, and never wished to hear of. Yet I had to sit and listen. How interesting!!!
Nor is this all. I occasionally meet with one who, in addition to all this, asks a few questions and makes a few remarks too ridiculous to be believed. Once, a gentleman who had been quizzing me for half-an-hour in a street-car, gravely asked:
“Don’t you think there are a great many unnecessary legs taken off, by army surgeons?”
He meant, I suppose, “legs taken off unnecessarily,” and I thought so; but he had been boring me till I felt pale and looked like fainting, and I replied:
“Yes. I think that, strictly speaking, all that are taken off are unnecessary, for those who lose them manage to live without them.”
He didn’t bother me any more.
On a similar occasion, a gentleman asked: