It may have been feared by his friends, that he yielded, at this period, to _other propensities_. Indeed, one letter which I received after his death, more than intimated all this. The remark alluded to was as follows:--"I have had the fear that there was something unexplained about his case, as you say you once had." For various reasons, I am inclined to believe that the indulgence referred to had little to do with his comparatively sudden death. His whole soul was pivoted on that great central organ, the stomach. For this he lived, and for this, probably, he died. My own principal error, in relation to the case, was, in suffering him to go upon the farm with such unintelligent, though well-intentioned teachers. Lord Bacon and others have said, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing;" and in nothing is the remark more applicable than to the first or pioneer knowledge of people on hygiene. From the very nature of the case it must be so. I ought either to have protested against the farm, _in toto_, or given such minute instructions that they could not have been easily mistaken. But I had my reasons, at the time, for the course I took, and I thought them quite sufficient. How easy it is, in this world, to find cause for misgivings! CHAPTER LXXXII. SCARLATINA CURED BY LETTING ALONE. At a certain season when scarlet fever was very prevalent among us, a member of my family was attacked with it slightly, and, as it was believed by almost everybody to be contagious, the case excited much alarm. The fact that in persons of my friend's age, it had, during the season, occasionally proved fatal, no doubt increased the apprehension and alarm, and led to many anxious fears about the treatment. Those who regarded my general method of treating disease as rather too "tame," and who supposed themselves in special danger of "taking the disease," were not only curious, but curiously inquisitive to know what I would do in my own family, to meet this supposed terrible malady. My first object was to quiet all fears, especially in the patient. It would have been easy--comparatively so--to do this, had it not been for the croakings of our neighbors. They told the sick person so many dismal stories of persons of her age--she was in middle life--who had died of scarlet fever, that it was not so easy to resist, wholly, the impressions. The most resolute and determined are apt to yield, in such circumstances. However, we did the best we could. We endeavored not only to keep her quiet in mind, but in body. All irregularities were carefully watched and guarded against; not by giving medicine to prevent evil, real or imaginary; not by prophylactics, as they are called; but by strictly and carefully obeying all the laws pertaining to the human, physical frame, so far as they were then understood.