The doctors were agreed on it, and they set about reassuring me with phrases of unconcern: You have an ulcer; there is nothing to fear. Only follow our instructions, be careful in taking your food, and no harm will come to you.

I was one of those who are upset by the smallest surprises — how then with me now, having been told this?... I went straight home and stayed two days in my bed, staring at the ceiling of the room; then I set about putting my affairs in order and arranging the accounts and the lists, and I felt the stab of pain, so I swallowed the medicine and rested, lest my friends be distressed to see me so weak.

I read a great deal about living with this disease, and I discussed what I had taken in from my readings

with everyone who would lend me an ear, and time passed comfortably enough. Once I got up to take a pill of medicine, and hardly had I stepped from my bed when a fog covered my world, and I no longer knew what happened, until I opened my eyes to find myself in a hos-pital room, my head swollen from a blow I had received as I fell to the floor of the room. And so the doctors put me on the death list; they barred visitors from me, and my only messenger to the outside world was my faithful wife, who never ceased to smile, hiding the inward pain she endured. She always brought me books to read, among them a book from which I took this passage: "Befriend him whom you cannot defeat." But is that permissible

with an ulcer? The blood in my brain had grown weak after the hemorrhage, and that gave no cause for reassurance; yet it was impossible that I be defeated by something so simple. Let me then use diplomacy with this adversary, and make a friend of him — but that was not according to the medical method, and do not expect me to explain it to you in that fashion, though I had tried the pills of medicine, and its doses.

To take a medicine without a doctor's prescription is a mistaken idea; yet I did it — but my medicine did not come from the pharmacy, and I shall tell you my experience: perhaps you will believe it, or perhaps you will toss my words into the wastebasket. I do not smoke at all, so that is not the cause of my illness, nor is drink. I am fifty years old; I have never overtaxed my body — what, then, was I to give up?...

I sat down to write a list, which I went over critically twice, and when I had finished, the conclusion was that I was troubled. What, then, is my worry? My family is provided for, my post is good, my house is fine, my life is secure. And suddenly I knew the cause: my worry embraces the past, the present, and the future, and leaves out not a stray detail. I was worrying about worry itself, and I heard an inner voice say: "Befriend worry too."

I slept long, and when I rose, the first thing I did was to write out a list of these worries and their causes; and hardly had I finished when I felt fire leaping from my body, and fatigue sapping my strength, so that I wished I might die, to find rest,

A certain man was hungry, and did not own so much as a date-speck; so he entered a restaurant and asked for a little bread and cheese. The cashier asked him:

"Do you want anything else?"

— "Yes, I would like to exchange the cheese for a tin of sardines."

— "Very well. And what else?"

— "I prefer to take a tin of meat instead of the sardines."

— "As you wish."

— "And now I must be going."

— "But you have not paid for the tin of meat."

— "Did I not exchange it for the tin of sardines?"

— "But you did not pay for the sardines either."

— "I exchanged them for the cheese."

— "And you have not settled with me for the cheese either."

— "But you still have it... good day to you!"