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Show THE .UNATTAINABLE j i fTHERE'S a spot on my back, A about the size of a postage j stamp, that has been Itching all day," j said the retired merchant, "and It lias caused rue more gTlef than the last attack of rheumatism. I can't reach It with either hand, and I have been backing up against every telephone tele-phone pole and gatepost, rubbing like a horse with the mange. A man of my social and commercial standing doesn't look dlgnitled while thus engaged, en-gaged, but -when a man's back Itches, be has to defy the conven- tlons, and get relief Hie best way he can." "I can understand just how It has worried you," said the hotelkeeper. "The fact that you couldn't reach around and claw the Itching place with your fingers kept the matter fresh in your memory and got on your nerves. The pursuit of the unattainable unattain-able always Is more interesting to us than the easier work close to hand. You had your whole person to scratch, and might have bought a currycomb for a quarter, and had a good time, but you couldn't be happy until you bad reached the one Inaccessible spot.' "A while ago X Imagined I had heart disease, and went and saw the doctor. He knows I have money in the bank, and am considered good pay, so he confirmed my worst fears, and made up bis mind to have me for his star patient, until one of us petered out. He threw an awful scare Into me, so that I went home sweating ice cold circus lemonade. ' "He gave me some medicines and a lot of Instructions. Among them was one to the effect. that when I went to bed I should always sleep on my right side. He cautioned me over and over again against laying on my left side, and left the impression that if I disobeyed dis-obeyed him, I'd wake up some morning morn-ing to find myself a candidate for a floral horseshoe. "That matter looked easy at the time, and I assured the doctor I'd follow fol-low his bylaws to the letter. When T went to bed that night, I stretched out on my right side, and in ten minutes min-utes I was Just suffering to roll over. I don't believe I ever had such a hankering for anything. It seemed to me the height of human happiness would lie in sleeping on one's left side. I followed Instructions for two nights, and then I decided that life wasn't worth such sacrifices, and I rolled over and slept on my left side, and nothing happened. I was feeling better than usual next morning when I got up. "Of course this experience lessened my confidence In the doctor's instructions, instruc-tions, and I concluded that if I was going to sidestep the Instructions 1 might as well sidestep the medicines, too, for they tasted like low life In a Chinese alley, and I threw the whole lot out of the window. Thus the saw-hones saw-hones lost his most promising patient because he handed out a rule that wasn't strictly necessary. "Speaking of the unattainable, do you know what's the matter with Silas Furbelow? He has everything a man could ask, a stranger In the town would say. He has a beautiful home and a wife who would beconsidered a success anywhere, and be has festoons of money where it will do the most good. "Yet he has a secret sorrow. I think he's the most melancholy man I ever saw, and his trouble is that he can't raise a good stand of whiskers. Nowadays, when whiskers are considered consid-ered an infirmity, it seems strange that any man should grieve over such i a matter. 1 1 "He sends all over the United 1 1 States for hair growers, and half the j time his face is blistered or swollen, ' ancT still the whiskers won't grow on i him. If some miracle happened, and he woke up some morning to find his countenance all covered with whiskers, he'd probably have tbem shaved off within a week; hut because they won't grow, he won't be happy till he gets them." |