Excerpt from Forty-Odd Years in the Literary Shop My determination to write these memoirs came about in this fashion. A disaster, neither the first nor the worst, and I fear not the last, of a series that overtook me during my seventh decade, brought me to the operat ing table in Roosevelt Hospital where I heard the voice of one invisible saying: I am the sleep-doctor. Try to breathe three or four times through this piece Of gauze. The fourth breath was superfluous for it needed only the third to bring me back to my bed in a private room, free from the pain that I had endured for many days and dimly conscious that I was permanently crippled. Such is the magic Of modern surgery. Then, with my senses dulled by opiates, I entered upon a period Of rest and peace to which I had long been a stranger. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.