Ledger of the Green Light

Calvert — I have a man from the river whose hip is as ruined as I found it in March, and who tells me that Tuesday last a green light stood in the corner of his room and “read the pain out,” which is his phrase. He is not theatrical. He is tired of being believed only when he is ordinary.

I examined him. The joint is unchanged. I do not think he is lying in the way the hospital means lying. I do not know what to put in the chart that will not make a fool of one of us. The light, he says, was the color of bottle-glass, and it made no heat, and his wife, who was in the other bed, did not wake.

I propose we keep a second book. Not for the Society, who will want a verdict, and not for the Church, who will want a moral. A book for what people will only say in a room with the door closed. If we are wrong, we will have been kind. If we are right, we will have been early.

I remain, etc. — E. Voss