English fiction -- 19th century; Labor unions -- Fiction
“To change the air and the scene. I'll be frank with you--you are man
enough to bear the truth--you have received a shock that will very
likely bring on brain-fever, unless you get some sleep tonight. But you
would not sleep in Hillsborough. You'd wake a dozen times in the night,
trembling like an aspen leaf, and fancying you were blown up again.”
“Yes, but my mother, sir! If I don't go home at seven o'clock, she'll
find me out.”
“If you went crazy wouldn't she find you out? Come, my young friend,
trust to my experience, and to the interest this attempt to murder you,
and your narrow escape, have inspired in me. When I have landed you in
the Temple of Health, and just wasted a little advice on a pig-headed
patient in the neighborhood (he is the squire of the place), I'll drive
back to Hillsborough, and tell your mother some story or other: you and
I will concoct that together as we go.”
At this Henry was all obedience, and indeed thanked him, with the tears
in his eyes, for his kindness to a poor stranger.
Dr. Amboyne smiled. “If you were not a stranger, you would know that
saving cutlers' lives is my hobby, and one in which I am steadily
resisted and defeated, especially by the cutlers themselves: why, I look
upon you as a most considerate and obliging young man for indulging me
in this way. If you had been a Hillsborough hand, you would insist upon
a brain-fever, and a trip to the lunatic asylum, just to vex me, and
hinder me of my hobby.”
Henry stared. This was too eccentric for him to take it all in at once.
“What!” said Dr. Amboyne, observing his amazement, “Did you never hear
of Dr. Doubleface?”
“No, sir.”
“Never hear of the corpulent lunatic, who goes about the city chanting,
like a cuckoo, 'Put yourself in his place--put yourself in her place--in
their place?'
“No, sir, I never did.”
“Then such is fame. Well, never mind that just now; there's a time for
every thing. Please observe that ruined house: the ancient family to
whom it belongs are a remarkable example of the vicissitude of human
affairs.” He then told him the curious ups and downs of that family,
which, at two distant periods, had held vast possessions in the county;
but were now represented by the shell of one manor house, and its
dovecote, the size of a modern villa. Next he showed him an obscure
battlefield, and told him that story, and who were the parties engaged;
and so on. Every mile furnished its legend, and Dr. Amboyne related them
all so graphically that the patient's mind was literally stolen away
from himself. At last, after a rapid drive of eleven miles through the
pure invigorating air, they made a sudden turn, and entered a pleasant
and singularly rural village: they drew up at a rustic farmhouse, clad
with ivy; and Dr. Amboyne said, “This is the temple: here you can sleep
as safe from gunpowder as a field-marshal born.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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