"The Jap must have been an expert in jiu jitsu, the wrestling game of that country. I've made a stagger at studying medicine since then, and learned a little. The pneumogastric nerve did the business. It passes from the base of the brain, down past the heart and lungs and ends near the stomach. It is motor, sensory, and sympathetic, all in one. Gentle pressure inhibits breathing, continued pressure, or stimulus, paralyzes the vocal chords; a continuance of the stimulus renders you unconscious, and a strong pressure brings about stoppage of the heart action, and death."
THE MARRIED MAN
He told the story while he and I smoked at one end of his veranda, and his kindly faced wife talked with "the only girl on earth" at the other end, beyond reach of his voice. He was a large, portly, and benign old gentleman, with an infinite experience of life, whom I had long known as a fellow-tenant in the studio building. He was not an artist, but an editorial-writer on one of the great dailies, who worked, cooked, and slept in his studio, until Saturday evening came, when he regularly disappeared, until Monday morning.
There was nothing in this to surprise me, until he invited the only girl and myself to visit his country home over Sunday, incidentally informing us that he was a married man, and had been for more than twenty years.
And we found him most happily married. Indeed, he and his white-haired wife were so foolishly fond of each other that their caresses would have seemed absurd had they not been so genuine.
These old lovers had made much of us; and they seemed so sincerely interested in our coming marriage that, in the evening, as night settled over the quiet little suburb, and we sought the veranda for coolness, I ventured to comment to my host on his mode of life.
"Best plan in the world," he answered. "You'll find it so, after a year or two of creative work at home. Don't give up your studio. If you do, you will suffer—as I did before I began my double life—from nervous prostration. I was writing when I married—long-winded essays, sermons, editorials, and arguments about nothing at all, simply built up from the films of my imagination. The thousand-and-one distractions of household life interfered too much, and the more I tried to force my brain the more I fatigued it. The result was that I had a bad six months with myself, and then gave out, just on the verge of insanity.
"Yes, my home life nearly maddened me, as I have said. Then, I took a studio, lived in it, and visited my wife twice a week. The result was that I got my work done, and found my wife as glad to see me as I was to see her. It was like a lad's going to see his girl; and, talk as you like about conjugal bliss, a woman gets tired of a man about the house all day long. Still, there is a danger attached to this dual residence. One must walk straight, for he is a marked man. I had an experience at the beginning that taught me the need of prudence.
"It was while I was mentally convalescent, but yet a very weak man, nervous, irritable, and of unsound judgment. There was about the same kind of a crowd in the building as now—artists, musicians, actors, and actresses. There were women coming and going at all hours, and all sorts of shady characters had access to the place. One day a neighbor named Bunker brought a pleasing young person in black into my place, and introduced us. She was the widow, she informed me, of a newspaper man, who often, when alive, had spoken of me. So hearing that I was in the building, she had asked her friend, Mr. Bunker, to bring us together, as she wished to know her dear husband's friends. She wiped away a tear at this point—genuine, too.