FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27  
28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   >>   >|  
thing, but I never knew a doctor called into any case yet but what it transpired that another day's delay would have rendered cure hopeless. Our medical guide, philosopher, and friend is like the hero in a melodrama--he always comes upon the scene just, and only just, in the nick of time. It is Providence, that is what it is. Well, as I was saying, I was very ill and was ordered to Buxton for a month, with strict injunctions to do nothing whatever all the while that I was there. "Rest is what you require," said the doctor, "perfect rest." It seemed a delightful prospect. "This man evidently understands my complaint," said I, and I pictured to myself a glorious time--a four weeks' _dolce far niente_ with a dash of illness in it. Not too much illness, but just illness enough--just sufficient to give it the flavor of suffering and make it poetical. I should get up late, sip chocolate, and have my breakfast in slippers and a dressing-gown. I should lie out in the garden in a hammock and read sentimental novels with a melancholy ending, until the books should fall from my listless hand, and I should recline there, dreamily gazing into the deep blue of the firmament, watching the fleecy clouds floating like white-sailed ships across its depths, and listening to the joyous song of the birds and the low rustling of the trees. Or, on becoming too weak to go out of doors, I should sit propped up with pillows at the open window of the ground-floor front, and look wasted and interesting, so that all the pretty girls would sigh as they passed by. And twice a day I should go down in a Bath chair to the Colonnade to drink the waters. Oh, those waters! I knew nothing about them then, and was rather taken with the idea. "Drinking the waters" sounded fashionable and Queen Anne-fied, and I thought I should like them. But, ugh! after the first three or four mornings! Sam Weller's description of them as "having a taste of warm flat-irons" conveys only a faint idea of their hideous nauseousness. If anything could make a sick man get well quickly, it would be the knowledge that he must drink a glassful of them every day until he was recovered. I drank them neat for six consecutive days, and they nearly killed me; but after then I adopted the plan of taking a stiff glass of brandy-and-water immediately on the top of them, and found much relief thereby. I have been informed since, by various eminent medical gentlemen, that the alcohol mus
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27  
28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

waters

 

illness

 
medical
 

doctor

 

pillows

 

fashionable

 

Drinking

 

propped

 

sounded

 

thought


window
 

Colonnade

 

pretty

 

passed

 

interesting

 

ground

 

wasted

 

nauseousness

 

adopted

 

taking


brandy

 

killed

 

consecutive

 

immediately

 

eminent

 

gentlemen

 

alcohol

 

informed

 

relief

 
recovered

conveys

 
description
 

mornings

 

Weller

 

knowledge

 

glassful

 

quickly

 

hideous

 

require

 

injunctions


ordered

 

Buxton

 

strict

 

perfect

 

pictured

 

complaint

 

glorious

 
understands
 

evidently

 

delightful