This being Sunday and a beautiful blossoming day, with a warm wind blowing, I sat at my window with the "Hygiene of the Nervous System" (Sandy's latest contribution to my mental needs) open in my lap, and my eyes on the prospect without. "Thank Heaven!" thought I, "that this institution was so commandingly placed that at least we can look out over the cast-iron wall which shuts us in."
I was feeling very cooped-up and imprisoned and like an orphan myself; so I decided that my own nervous system required fresh air and exercise and adventure. Straight before me ran that white ribbon of road that dips into the valley and up over the hills on the other side. Ever since I came I have longed to follow it to the top and find out what lies beyond those hills. Poor Judy! I dare say that very same longing enveloped your childhood. If any one of my little chicks ever stands by the window and looks across the valley to the hills and asks, "What's over there?" I shall telephone for a motor car.
But today my chicks were all piously engaged with their little souls, I the only wanderer at heart. I changed my silken Sunday gown for homespun, planning meanwhile a means to get to the top of those hills.
Then I went to the telephone and brazenly called up 505.
"Good afternoon, Mrs. McGurk," said I, very sweet. "May I be speaking with Dr. MacRae?"
"Howld the wire," said she, very short.
"Afternoon, Doctor," said I to him. "Have ye, by chance, any dying patients who live on the top o' the hills beyant?"
"I have not, thank the Lord!"
"'Tis a pity," said I, disappointed. "And what are ye afther doin' with yerself the day?"
"I am reading the `Origin of Species.'"