ILLUSIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS

A doctor came up to a patient in an insane asylum, slapped him on the

back, and said: "Well, old man, you're all right. You can run along and

write your folks that you'll be back home in two weeks as good as new."



The patient went off gayly to write his letter. He had it finished and

sealed, but when he was licking the stamp it slipped through his fingers

to the floor, lighted on the back of a cockroach that was passing, and

stuck. The patient hadn't seen the cockroach--what he did see was his

escaped postage stamp zig-zagging aimlessly across the floor to the

baseboard, wavering up over the baseboard, and following a crooked track

up the wall and across the ceiling. In depressed silence he tore up the

letter he had just written and dropped the pieces on the floor.



"Two weeks! Hell!" he said. "I won't be out of here in three years."