"Have you a pain in the back of your head?" he asked. I told him I had not.
"Shut your eyes," he ordered, "put your feet close together, and jump backward as far as you can."
I always was a good backward jumper with my eyes shut, so I obeyed. My head struck the edge of the bathroom door, which had been left open and was only three feet away. The doctor was very sorry. He had overlooked the fact that the door was open. He closed it.
"Now touch your nose with your right forefinger2," he said.
"Where is it?" I asked.
"On your face," said he.
"I mean my right forefinger," I explained.
"Oh, excuse me," said he. He reopened the bathroom door, and I took my finger out of the crack of it. After I had performed the marvellous digito-nasal feat3 I said:
"I do not wish to deceive you as to symptoms, Doctor; I really have something like a pain in the back of my head." He ignored the symptom and examined my heart carefully with a latest-popular-air-penny-in-the-slot ear-trumpet. I felt like a ballad4.
I gave the best imitation I could of a disqualified Percheron being led out of Madison Square Garden. Then, without dropping in a penny, he listened to my chest again.
"No glanders in our family, Doc," I said.
The consulting physician held up his forefinger within three inches of my nose. "Look at my finger," he commanded.
"Did you ever try Pears'—" I began; but he went on with his test rapidly.
"Now look across the bay. At my finger. Across the bay. At my finger. At my finger. Across the bay. Across the bay. At my finger. Across the bay." This for about three minutes.
He explained that this was a test of the action of the brain. It seemed easy to me. I never once mistook his finger for the bay. I'll bet that if he had used the phrases: "Gaze, as it were, unpreoccupied, outward—or rather laterally—in the direction of the horizon, underlaid, so to speak, with the adjacent fluid inlet," and "Now, returning—or rather, in a manner, withdrawing your attention, bestow6 it upon my upraised digit"—I'll bet, I say, that Henry James himself could have passed the examination.
After asking me if I had ever had a grand uncle with curvature of the spine7 or a cousin with swelled8 ankles, the two doctors retired9 to the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath tub for their consultation10. I ate an apple, and gazed first at my finger and then across the bay.
The doctors came out looking grave. More: they looked tombstones and Tennessee-papers-please-copy. They wrote out a diet list to which I was to be restricted. It had everything that I had ever heard of to eat on it, except snails11. And I never eat a snail12 unless it overtakes me and bites me first.
"You must follow this diet strictly," said the doctors.
"I'd follow it a mile if I could get one-tenth of what's on it," I answered.
"Of next importance," they went on, "is outdoor air and exercise. And here is a prescription13 that will be of great benefit to you."
Then all of us took something. They took their hats, and I took my departure.
I went to a druggist and showed him the prescription.
"It will be $2.87 for an ounce bottle," he said.
"Will you give me a piece of your wrapping cord?" said I.
I made a hole in the prescription, ran the cord through it, tied it around my neck, and tucked it inside. All of us have a little superstition14, and mine runs to a confidence in amulets15.
Of course there was nothing the matter with me, but I was very ill. I couldn't work, sleep, eat, or bowl. The only way I could get any sympathy was to go without shaving for four days. Even then somebody would say: "Old man, you look as hardy16 as a pine knot. Been up for a jaunt17 in the Maine woods, eh?"
Then, suddenly, I remembered that I must have outdoor air and exercise. So I went down South to John's. John is an approximate relative by verdict of a preacher standing18 with a little book in his hands in a bower19 of chrysanthemums20 while a hundred thousand people looked on. John has a country house seven miles from Pineville. It is at an altitude and on the Blue Ridge21 Mountains in a state too dignified22 to be dragged into this controversy23. John is mica24, which is more valuable and clearer than gold.
He met me at Pineville, and we took the trolley25 car to his home. It is a big, neighbourless cottage on a hill surrounded by a hundred mountains. We got off at his little private station, where John's family and Amaryllis met and greeted us. Amaryllis looked at me a trifle anxiously.
A rabbit came bounding across the hill between us and the house. I threw down my suit-case and pursued it hotfoot. After I had run twenty yards and seen it disappear, I sat down on the grass and wept disconsolately26.
"I can't catch a rabbit any more," I sobbed27. "I'm of no further use in the world. I may as well be dead."
"Oh, what is it—what is it, Brother John?" I heard Amaryllis say.
"Nerves a little unstrung," said John, in his calm way. "Don't worry. Get up, you rabbit-chaser, and come on to the house before the biscuits get cold." It was about twilight28, and the mountains came up nobly to Miss Murfree's descriptions of them.
Soon after dinner I announced that I believed I could sleep for a year or two, including legal holidays. So I was shown to a room as big and cool as a flower garden, where there was a bed as broad as a lawn. Soon afterward29 the remainder of the household retired, and then there fell upon the land a silence.
I had not heard a silence before in years. It was absolute. I raised myself on my elbow and listened to it. Sleep! I thought that if I only could hear a star twinkle or a blade of grass sharpen itself I could compose myself to rest. I thought once that I heard a sound like the sail of a catboat flapping as it veered30 about in a breeze, but I decided31 that it was probably only a tack32 in the carpet. Still I listened.
Suddenly some belated little bird alighted upon the window-sill, and, in what he no doubt considered sleepy tones, enunciated33 the noise generally translated as "cheep!"
I leaped into the air.
"Hey! what's the matter down there?" called John from his room above mine.
"Oh, nothing," I answered, "except that I accidentally bumped my head against the ceiling."
The next morning I went out on the porch and looked at the mountains. There were forty-seven of them in sight. I shuddered34, went into the big hall sitting room of the house, selected "Pancoast's Family Practice of Medicine" from a bookcase, and began to read. John came in, took the book away from me, and led me outside. He has a farm of three hundred acres furnished with the usual complement35 of barns, mules36, peasantry, and harrows with three front teeth broken off. I had seen such things in my childhood, and my heart began to sink.
Then John spoke37 of alfalfa, and I brightened at once. "Oh, yes," said I, "wasn't she in the chorus of—let's see—"
"I know," said I, "and the grass grows over her."
"Right," said John. "You know something about farming, after all."
On the way back to the house a beautiful and inexplicable41 creature walked across our path. I stopped irresistibly42 fascinated, gazing at it. John waited patiently, smoking his cigarette. He is a modern farmer. After ten minutes he said: "Are you going to stand there looking at that chicken all day? Breakfast is nearly ready."
"A chicken?" said I.
"A White Orpington hen, if you want to particularize."
"A White Orpington hen?" I repeated, with intense interest. The fowl43 walked slowly away with graceful44 dignity, and I followed like a child after the Pied Piper. Five minutes more were allowed me by John, and then he took me by the sleeve and conducted me to breakfast.
After I had been there a week I began to grow alarmed. I was sleeping and eating well and actually beginning to enjoy life. For a man in my desperate condition that would never do. So I sneaked45 down to the trolley-car station, took the car for Pineville, and went to see one of the best physicians in town. By this time I knew exactly what to do when I needed medical treatment. I hung my hat on the back of a chair, and said rapidly:
"Doctor, I have cirrhosis of the heart, indurated arteries46, neurasthenia, neuritis, acute indigestion, and convalescence47. I am going to live on a strict diet. I shall also take a tepid48 bath at night and a cold one in the morning. I shall endeavour to be cheerful, and fix my mind on pleasant subjects. In the way of drugs I intend to take a phosphorous pill three times a day, preferably after meals, and a tonic49 composed of the tinctures of gentian, cinchona, calisaya, and cardamon compound. Into each teaspoonful50 of this I shall mix tincture of nux vomica, beginning with one drop and increasing it a drop each day until the maximum dose is reached. I shall drop this with a medicine-dropper, which can be procured51 at a trifling52 cost at any pharmacy53. Good morning."
I took my hat and walked out. After I had closed the door I remembered something that I had forgotten to say. I opened it again. The doctor had not moved from where he had been sitting, but he gave a slightly nervous start when he saw me again.
"I forgot to mention," said I, "that I shall also take absolute rest and exercise."
After this consultation I felt much better. The reëstablishing in my mind of the fact that I was hopelessly ill gave me so much satisfaction that I almost became gloomy again. There is nothing more alarming to a neurasthenic than to feel himself growing well and cheerful.
John looked after me carefully. After I had evinced so much interest in his White Orpington chicken he tried his best to divert my mind, and was particular to lock his hen house of nights. Gradually the tonic mountain air, the wholesome54 food, and the daily walks among the hills so alleviated55 my malady56 that I became utterly57 wretched and despondent58. I heard of a country doctor who lived in the mountains nearby. I went to see him and told him the whole story. He was a gray-bearded man with clear, blue, wrinkled eyes, in a home-made suit of gray jeans.
In order to save time I diagnosed my case, touched my nose with my right forefinger, struck myself below the knee to make my foot kick, sounded my chest, stuck out my tongue, and asked him the price of cemetery59 lots in Pineville.
He lit his pipe and looked at me for about three minutes. "Brother," he said, after a while, "you are in a mighty60 bad way. There's a chance for you to pull through, but it's a mighty slim one."
"What can it be?" I asked eagerly. "I have taken arsenic61 and gold, phosphorus, exercise, nux vomica, hydrotherapeutic baths, rest, excitement, codein, and aromatic62 spirits of ammonia. Is there anything left in the pharmacopœia?"
"Somewhere in these mountains," said the doctor, "there's a plant growing—a flowering plant that'll cure you, and it's about the only thing that will. It's of a kind that's as old as the world; but of late it's powerful scarce and hard to find. You and I will have to hunt it up. I'm not engaged in active practice now: I'm getting along in years; but I'll take your case. You'll have to come every day in the afternoon and help me hunt for this plant till we find it. The city doctors may know a lot about new scientific things, but they don't know much about the cures that nature carries around in her saddlebags."
So every day the old doctor and I hunted the cure-all plant among the mountains and valleys of the Blue Ridge. Together we toiled63 up steep heights so slippery with fallen autumn leaves that we had to catch every sapling and branch within our reach to save us from falling. We waded64 through gorges65 and chasms66, breast-deep with laurel and ferns; we followed the banks of mountain streams for miles; we wound our way like Indians through brakes of pine—road side, hill side, river side, mountain side we explored in our search for the miraculous67 plant.
As the old doctor said, it must have grown scarce and hard to find. But we followed our quest. Day by day we plumbed68 the valleys, scaled the heights, and tramped the plateaus in search of the miraculous plant. Mountain-bred, he never seemed to tire. I often reached home too fatigued69 to do anything except fall into bed and sleep until morning. This we kept up for a month.
One evening after I had returned from a six-mile tramp with the old doctor, Amaryllis and I took a little walk under the trees near the road. We looked at the mountains drawing their royal-purple robes around them for their night's repose70.
"I'm glad you're well again," she said. "When you first came you frightened me. I thought you were really ill."
Amaryllis looked at me in surprise. "Why," said she, "you are as strong as one of the plough-mules, you sleep ten or twelve hours every night, and you are eating us out of house and home. What more do you want?"
"I tell you," said I, "that unless we find the magic—that is, the plant we are looking for—in time, nothing can save me. The doctor tells me so."
"What doctor?"
"I have known him since I was able to talk. And is that where you go every day—is it he who takes you on these long walks and climbs that have brought back your health and strength? God bless the old doctor."
Just then the old doctor himself drove slowly down the road in his rickety old buggy. I waved my hand at him and shouted that I would be on hand the next day at the usual time. He stopped his horse and called to Amaryllis to come out to him. They talked for five minutes while I waited. Then the old doctor drove on.
When we got to the house Amaryllis lugged73 out an encyclopædia and sought a word in it. "The doctor said," she told me, "that you needn't call any more as a patient, but he'd be glad to see you any time as a friend. And then he told me to look up my name in the encyclopædia and tell you what it means. It seems to be the name of a genus of flowering plants, and also the name of a country girl in Theocritus and Virgil. What do you suppose the doctor meant by that?"
"I know what he meant," said I. "I know now."
A word to a brother who may have come under the spell of the unquiet Lady Neurasthenia.
The formula was true. Even though gropingly at times, the physicians of the walled cities had put their fingers upon the specific medicament.
And so for the exercise one is referred to good Doctor Tatum on Black Oak Mountain—take the road to your right at the Methodist meeting house in the pine-grove.
Absolute rest and exercise!
What rest more remedial than to sit with Amaryllis in the shade, and, with a sixth sense, read the wordless Theocritan idyl of the gold-bannered blue mountains marching orderly into the dormitories of the night?
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1
uncertainty
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| n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物 | |
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forefinger
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| n.食指 | |
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feat
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| n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的 | |
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ballad
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| n.歌谣，民谣，流行爱情歌曲 | |
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gallop
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| v./n.(马或骑马等)飞奔；飞速发展 | |
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bestow
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| v.把…赠与，把…授予；花费 | |
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spine
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| n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊 | |
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swelled
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| 增强( swell的过去式和过去分词 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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consultation
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| n.咨询；商量；商议；会议 | |
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snails
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| n.蜗牛；迟钝的人；蜗牛( snail的名词复数 ) | |
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snail
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| n.蜗牛 | |
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prescription
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| n.处方，开药；指示，规定 | |
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superstition
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| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
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amulets
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| n.护身符( amulet的名词复数 ) | |
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hardy
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| adj.勇敢的，果断的，吃苦的；耐寒的 | |
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jaunt
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| v.短程旅游；n.游览 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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bower
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| n.凉亭，树荫下凉快之处；闺房；v.荫蔽 | |
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chrysanthemums
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| n.菊花( chrysanthemum的名词复数 ) | |
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ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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controversy
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| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
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mica
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| n.云母 | |
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trolley
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| n.手推车，台车；无轨电车；有轨电车 | |
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disconsolately
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| adv.悲伤地，愁闷地；哭丧着脸 | |
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sobbed
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| 哭泣，啜泣( sob的过去式和过去分词 )； 哭诉，呜咽地说 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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veered
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| v.（尤指交通工具）改变方向或路线( veer的过去式和过去分词 )；（指谈话内容、人的行为或观点）突然改变；（指风） （在北半球按顺时针方向、在南半球按逆时针方向）逐渐转向；风向顺时针转 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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tack
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| n.大头钉；假缝，粗缝 | |
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enunciated
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| v.（清晰地）发音( enunciate的过去式和过去分词 )；确切地说明 | |
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shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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complement
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| n.补足物，船上的定员；补语；vt.补充，补足 | |
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mules
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| 骡( mule的名词复数 )； 拖鞋； 顽固的人； 越境运毒者 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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38
plow
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| n.犁，耕地，犁过的地；v.犁，费力地前进[英]plough | |
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scythe
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| n. 长柄的大镰刀，战车镰； v. 以大镰刀割 | |
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mow
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| v.割（草、麦等），扫射，皱眉；n.草堆，谷物堆 | |
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inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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42
irresistibly
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| adv.无法抵抗地，不能自持地；极为诱惑人地 | |
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fowl
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| n.家禽，鸡，禽肉 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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45
sneaked
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| v.潜行( sneak的过去式和过去分词 )；偷偷溜走；（儿童向成人）打小报告；告状 | |
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46
arteries
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| n.动脉( artery的名词复数 )；干线，要道 | |
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convalescence
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| n.病后康复期 | |
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48
tepid
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| adj.微温的，温热的，不太热心的 | |
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49
tonic
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| n./adj.滋补品，补药，强身的，健体的 | |
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50
teaspoonful
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| n.一茶匙的量；一茶匙容量 | |
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51
procured
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| v.（努力）取得， （设法）获得( procure的过去式和过去分词 )；拉皮条 | |
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trifling
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| adj.微不足道的；没什么价值的 | |
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pharmacy
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| n.药房，药剂学，制药业，配药业，一批备用药品 | |
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54
wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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alleviated
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| 减轻，缓解，缓和( alleviate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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malady
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| n.病，疾病(通常做比喻) | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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despondent
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| adj.失望的，沮丧的，泄气的 | |
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cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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61
arsenic
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| n.砒霜，砷；adj.砷的 | |
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62
aromatic
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| adj.芳香的，有香味的 | |
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63
toiled
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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waded
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| （从水、泥等）蹚，走过，跋( wade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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gorges
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| n.山峡，峡谷( gorge的名词复数 )；咽喉v.（用食物把自己）塞饱，填饱( gorge的第三人称单数 )；作呕 | |
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66
chasms
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| 裂缝( chasm的名词复数 )； 裂口； 分歧； 差别 | |
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67
miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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68
plumbed
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| v.经历( plumb的过去式和过去分词 )；探究；用铅垂线校正；用铅锤测量 | |
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69
fatigued
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| adj. 疲乏的 | |
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70
repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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71
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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72
halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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73
lugged
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| vt.用力拖拉（lug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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