"You mean?"
"Don't ask any further." A man understands closed lips.
In a rolling chair, at the further end of the garden, sat a paralysed old man.
"How are you feeling, Uncle?" I greeted him.
"Fine, fine," he answered. "I am all right, now."
"He is a lucky dog," remarked my companion, the old man of the Talmud story. "He is paralysed all over."
"Do you call that lucky?—man, it's the greatest misfortune."
"Not in a Home," he answered. "The paralysed are like the dead—they don't feel when they are hurt." Once his tongue was loosened the old man went on. "There is an attendant here, a brute. When he gets mad he runs around to find fault with some one, to hit him. Then we all get out of his way. This fellow here, he has a bad stomach. He would always be the scapegoat. My, how he would suffer. Only his legs got paralysed at first and he had to be turned over in his bed. When that drunkard would get through with him the poor fellow's body was black and blue from pinches and punches. Now he does not feel anything. He punches him and hits and pinches and gets mad to see that the fellow does not feel pain at all."
"Is that true?" I turned to the old man in the rolling chair.
"You bet it's true, and I have my revenge now, to see him get wild. 'Hullo, Harry! Why don't you pinch me a bit. Come on, Harry, have a pinch,' and he gets mad—like a savage."