Of course, there was nothing to be uneasy about, and I wasn’t what you
may call really uneasy; but I was not feeling very well--that is, not
brisk--and I went to bed. I suppose that that was not a good idea,
because then they had me. I started in at the supper end of the mill and
went through. I am said to be all right now, and free from disease, but
this does not surprise me. What I have been through in these two weeks
would free a person of pretty much everything in him that wasn’t nailed
there--any loose thing, any unattached fragment of bone, or meat or
morals, or disease, or propensities or accomplishments, or what not. And
I don’t say but that I feel well enough, I feel better than I would if I
was dead, I reckon. And, besides, they say I am going to build up now
and come right along and be all right. I am not saying anything, but I
wish I had enough of my diseases back to make me aware of myself, and
enough of my habits to make it worth while to live. To have nothing the
matter with you and no habits is pretty tame, pretty colorless. It is
just the way a saint feels, I reckon; it is at least the way he looks. I
never could stand a saint. That reminds me that you see very few priests
around here, and yet, as I have already said, this whole big enterprise
is owned and managed by a convent. The few priests one does see here are
dressed like human beings, and so there may be more of them than I
imagine. Fifteen priests dressed like these could not attract as much of
your attention as would one priest at Aix-les-Bains. You cannot pull
your eye loose from the French priest as long as he is in sight, his
dress is so fascinatingly ugly. I seem to be wandering from the subject,
but I am not. This is about the coldest place I ever saw, and the
wettest, too. This August seems like an English November to me. Rain?
Why, it seems to like to rain here. It seems to rain every time there is
a chance. You are strictly required to be out airing and exercising
whenever the sun is shining, so I hate to see the sun shining because I
hate air and exercise--duty air and duty exercise taken for medicine. It
seems ungenuine, out of season, degraded to sordid utilities, a subtle
spiritual something gone from it which one can’t describe in words,
but--don’t you understand? With that gone what is left but canned air,
canned exercise, and you don’t want it.
When the sun does shine for a few moments or a few hours these people
swarm out and flock through the streets and over the hills and through
the pine woods, and make the most of the chance, and I have flocked out,
too, on some of these occasions, but as a rule I stay in and try to get
warm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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