One day he says he has found out the seat of
his disease to be the liver, and changes his diet to meet that view
of the case. Martha has to do him up in mustard, and he takes kindly
to blue pills. In a day or two he finds his liver is all right, but
that his brain is all wrong. The mustard goes now to the back of his
neck, and he takes solemn leave of us all, with the assurance that
his last hour has come. Finding that he survives the night, however,
he transfers the seat of his disease to the heart, spends hours in
counting his pulse, refuses to take exercise lest he should bring on
palpitations, and warns us all to prepare to follow him. Everybody
who comes in has to hear the whole story, every one prescribes
something, and he tries each remedy in turn. These all failing to
reach his case, he is s plunged into ten-fold gloom. He complains
that God has cast him off forever, and that his sins are like the
sands of the sea for number. I am such a goose that I listen to all
these varying moods and symptoms with the solemn conviction that he
is going to die immediately; I bathe his head, and count his pulse,
and fan him, and take down his dying depositions for Ernest's solace
after he has gone. And I talk theology to him by the hour, while
Martha bakes and brews in the kitchen, or makes mince pies, after
eating which one might give him the whole Bible at one dose, without
the smallest effect.
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