Beatrice is quite right about the importance of the pineal gland.
I myself hav made a lifelong study of the pineal and also of the infra-renal glands. And also she iz quite right about the habits of sheep and sheepherders.
I am an expert on sheepherders - no, I myself never herded sheep, but I was a
cow-boy, and cow-boys know all about sheepherders. Let me tell you what happened
to me once back in 1904; I was a raw lad of 18 with no more education than what
I cud get at a couple of Jesuit colleges in Paris, and I was expelled from both
sine laude whatever ? so I came to Amerika bekoz I was thirsting for democracy
and took a job with the Two Bar outfit and their small herd of 22.000 head of
catl grazing here and ther on the mountains and bad lands of northern Colorado
and southern Wyoming - I was night-hawk, a lonesome job which gave me plenty of
time to reflect on democracy and the pineal gland - (the night-hawk herds the
sadle-horses (about a hundred horses ? i had 98 on that trip, in my remuda) when
the outfit (one boss, six or seven punchers, one cook, one day-wrangler, one
night-wrangler - whom they call the ?night-hawk? ? and it?s a darn lonesome job
riding round and round the damn critters all night and singing so they wont get
scared and stampede and the sagebrush looks weird in the moonlight and the
night-hawks, i mean the real ones, the birds, come plummeting down out of the
darkness overhead and they straighten out just over your head with a whooosh
that's enuf to scare the pineal gland out of the bravest jesuit-bred lad of 18.
wel, to shorten this account of this my first experience with sheepherders one
night a goddam sheep got mixed-up with my caballada, of cors they stampeded
every time they saw that goddam ghostly animal appear from behind a bush? off
they wud go ratapalaplanking thru the sage and I after them and you are lucky if
your horse doesnt put his foot in a badger-hole and it breaks his leg and the
rider?s head and good-bye pinea! wel, the dawn came at last with that most lovly
of all planets the morning-star and that?s the time to gather the horses and go
home to the camp where the punchers are crawling out from under their
tarpaulins - wel i started my horses and there on the plain in the first light
of dawn I saw a sheepherder's camp, so I went over, and there were six or seven
thousand head of bawling sheep, and a sheepherder?s wagon, and in front of it
was standing the sheepherder himself, enjoying the dawn, smoking a pipe, but he
didnt look like no shepherd of the Lord, he didnt hav no lamb wrapped around his
neck, in fact he was quite a surprising sight in that far-western land: he wore
bib-overalls (i had never seen any before) no shoes, and a derby hat
and he was bearded, but I mean bearded, a real beard with crumbs in it?. so i went up
to him and sed "I guess you lost a sheep last night" he looked at me and
replied: "I guess you lost a sheep last night" I sed: "hell no, I am no
sheepherder" he looked at me and sed: "hell no, I am no sheepherder" I sed:
"You are no sheepherder" then what's all these animals here he repeated
that too". well i thot the conversation was not profitable so I left him there
contemplating the sunset and to hell with his lost sheep nobody wud miss one
sheep in seven thousand and i went to camp with my horses and the cow-boys sed I
was lucky he didnt shoot me, that sheperds didnt like cowboys?? well, it was
much later when I was studying psychiatry at the Hopkins that i learned about
echolalia and i remembered my sheepherder and I wud hav done anything to find
him again and see whether he cud spell bekoz by that time I had discovered that
bad spelling waz a minor symptom of ecolalia especially when it gets complicated
with the retroversion-retroflexion of the infrarenal glands (and by the way,
did ennibodi at St Lizzy take radiogramz of Ezra?s infrarenals? I bet that?s
why he kant spel my own kase has nothing to do with it, my bad spelling iz
due to an entirely difrent cause? mine is due to a drangement of the Russian
gland? I know what you will say that ther iz no such thing az the Russian
gland but there iz only it?s hard to locate because it wanders, it?s
a wandering gland, that?s what Mrs. Roosevelt has found out, now the secret is
out, but I trust you, and dont let anybody, especially not Vishinsky know that I
know about the Russian gland, or I?ll get murdered some day
