church or chapel was much
crowded, and there was a certain something in the atmosphere which
seemed to disqualify my faculties from comprehending a single word that
was spoken. It certainly was not that the ventilators were closed, for
there were none. The minister occasionally requested that the windows
might be let down a little, and the deacons invariably closed them again
when he looked the other way. At intervals, females were carried out, in
a motionless condition,--not, as it appeared, from conviction of sin,
but from faintness. You sat, absorbed in thought, with your eyes closed,
and seemed not to observe them. I remember that you were very much
shocked when I suggested that the breath of an average sinner exhausted
atmospheric air at the rate of a hogshead an hour, and asked you
how much allowance the laws of the universe made for the lungs of
church-members? I do not recall your precise words, but I remember that
I finally found it expedient, as I was to leave for home in the early
train, to spend that night at the neighboring hotel, where I indulged,
on an excellent mattress, in a slumber so profound, that it seemed
next morning as if I ought, as Dick Swiveller suggested to the single
gentleman, to pay for a double-bedded room.

Well, that is all over now. You have given up business, from ill health,
and exhibit a ripe old age, possibly a little over-ripe, at thirty-five.
Your dreams of the forthcoming ten years have not been exactly
fulfilled; you have not precisely retired on a competency, because the
competency retired from you. Indeed, the suddenness with which your
physician compelled you to close up your business left it closed rather
imperfectly, so that most of the profits are found to have leaked out.
You are economizing rather strictly, just now, in respect to everything
but doctors' bills. The maternal Dolorosa is boarding somewhere in the
country, where the children certainly will not have more indigestible
food than they had at home, and may get less of it in quantity,--to
say nothing of more air and exercise to aid digestion. They are not,
however, in perfect condition. The twins are just getting up from
scarlet fever; Nathaniel has been advised to leave school for a time;
and something is thought to be the matter with Angelina's back.
Meanwhile, you are haunting water-cures, experimenting on life-pills,
holding private conferences with medical electricians, and thinking of a
trip to the Bermuda