Bisbee daily review., 1912-09-08
THIRST
 FOLLOWS OPERATION
The World for a Drink When One Wakes to
 Consciousness

In the September American Mag azine a writer describes the sensa- tIons he went through when he was operated on for appendicitis. Follow ing is his account of the thirst he suf- fered when he came out of the anaes- thetic. He talking to his nurse:
 Cant I have a drink?"
 "'Yes. I'll give you a drink And so she does-a teaspoonful of hot wa ter which I am instructed to swallow slowly.
 Tt has about as much effect on that tarred and feathered tongue as a drop of dew on a hip rubber boot
 This is a new occupation: waiting
 for that teaspoonful of hot water, which arrives every half hour. ones thoughts dwell upon it, and one lis
 tens eagerly for the nurseB step, returning: ones mouth opens, in ad. vancs like a nesting brides. TO such a plane is reduced once strong mind.
 Tn the midst of this humiliating
 pastime the Lady-Who-Married-Me enters timidly, half-smilingly, half
 tearfully.
 Fine say. Listen. Come closer. Let us sing. Little Drops of Water"
 The nurse makes her withdrawal;
 and she goes, blanched because she deems me cTazed by my experiences of the past ten hours.
 The dose is doubled. to two tea spoonfuls at a time Nevertheless, despite this generosity in water rights. the waking dreams of a ilu- man being dying on the Death Val 1 ley desert obsess the brain. l see again the Mississippi River Of my boy hood (and anyway no other river would have sufficed); as it nipples by raft and sandbar l take repeated head i CTS into it's wet, luscious depths. l stand out on the lawn at home and let the Who Married-Me drench me with the hose. Some confounded l idiot is at the very moment sprinkl- ! ing the grass outside the hospital ] window-I can hear the nozzle fizzing. 1 l recall a spring, by a roadside, and 1 a battered tin can upside down on a stick. at its verge. ready for the next | thirsty conner. I would trade Rocke- l feller's millions for a draught out of ! that old can. But particularly dwell. lovingly upon a series of bar rels which used to stand in the shady
 corners of the runways among She | lumber piles of the millyards back ! by that same Mississippi. These bar | rels were dark and cool and dripping with their contents of bran and water and chunks of ice A tin dipper lay upon the cover of each barrel. The bran was supposed to render the drink inocuous of sunstroke or stom achache, no matter how hot you were, and when we boys trailed through | burned and perspiring and thirsty, Cd and from swimming and fishing, we ! halted at every barrel and gulped recklessly the milky mixture. There
 was plenty for all-for boys and for
 mill hands. Shooting the chutes up | on my spine in the boat bed (and
 never arrivingl, knees elevated over | the trapese, feet securely tucked
 against the pillows below, head bos stered upon the pillows above. back
 between curved like a contorted cur
 rant worm pierced in amidships
 mouth tasting now of sawdust and
 straw, again and again sent my as | tral frame to those barrels adown the piny, shady -cornered runways-but re mained behind myself, and accepted dole of two hot teaspOonfuls admins
 tered each half-hour; remained be
 hind, upon that confoundef bed and
 played birdie"