City and town life -- Fiction; England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Social classes -- Fiction; Women teachers -- Fiction
And yet he had tried them well, telling himself that he was only a
little feverish, and had been studying a little too hard. He had taken
a seidlitz powder according to the direction for use as printed upon the
square, flat box--that is to say, he had mixed the contents of the blue
paper in a tumbler of cold spring water, waited till it dissolved, then
emptied in the contents of the white paper, stirred, and drunk while in
a state of effervescence. He had dissolved the contents of the blue
paper in one glass of water and the contents of the white paper in
another glass of water, poured one into the other, and drunk while in a
state of effervescence. He had dissolved the contents of the papers
again separately, and drunk first one and then the other, allowing the
effervescence to take place _not_ in the tumbler. Still he was no
better, and he almost felt tempted to follow the example of the Eastern
potentate who took the whole of the contents of the blue papers first,
and then swallowed the contents of all the white papers afterwards; but
history tells that this monarch did not feel any better after the dose,
so that the Reverend Henry Lambent was not encouraged to proceed.
He was not seriously bad, and yet he was, if this paradoxical statement
can be accepted. He was mentally ill for the first time in his life of
the complaint from which he suffered, and he was trying hard to make
himself believe that his ailment was bodily and of a nervo-febrile cast.
The Reverend Henry Lambent's attack came on with the visible appearance
of a face before his eyes. If he sat down to read, it gazed up at him
from the book, like a beautiful illustration that filled every page. He
turned over, and it was there; he turned over again, and it was still
there. Leaf after leaf did he keep turning, and it was always before
him.
He set to work at his next week's sermons, and the manuscript paper
became illustrated as well with the same sweet pensive face, and when he
read prayers morning and evening, it seemed to him that he was making
supplication for that face alone. He preached on Sundays, and the
congregation seemed to consist of one--the owner of that face, and to
her he addressed himself morning and afternoon. If he sat and thought
it was of that face; if he went out for a constitutional, that face was
with him; and when at least a dozen times he set off, as he felt in duty
bound, to visit the schools, he turned off in another direction--he
dared not go for fear of meeting the owner of that face.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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