Two psychiatrists were at a convention.

"What was your most difficult case?" one asked the other.

"Once I had a patient who lived in a pure fantasy world," replied his colleague. "He believed that a wildly rich uncle in South America was going to leave him a fortune. All day long he waited for a make-believe letter to arrive from a fictitious attorney. He never went out or did anything. He just sat around and waited."

"What was the result?" asked the first psychiatrist.

"It was an eight-year struggle," said the second, "but I finally cured him . . . And then that stupid letter arrived . . ."

Bartimaeus had a dream. One day he would see. It was a foolish dream. At least it probably seemed so to his friends. Everybody knew that people with vision problems do not spontaneously regain the…