"And those who drink water, think water. The Elizabethans--Sidney and
Shakspeare, Burleigh and Queen Bess, worked on beef and ale,--and you
would not class them among the muddle-headed of the earth: Believe me,
to write well, you must live well. If you take it out of your brain,
you must put it in again. It's a question of fact. Try it for
yourself." And off Tom went; while Lucia rushed back to her husband,
covered him with caresses, assured him that he was seven times as ill
as he really was, and so nursed and petted him, that he felt himself,
for that time at least, a beast and a fool for having suspected her
for a moment. Ah, woman, if you only knew how you carry our hearts in
your hands, and would but use your power for our benefit, what angels
you might make us all!
"So," said Tom, as he went home, "he has found his way to the
elevation-bottle, has he, as well as Mrs. Heale? It's no concern of
mine: but as a professional man, I must stop that. You will certainly
be no credit to me if you kill yourself under my hands."
Tom went straight home, showed the blacksmith how to make a pair of
dumb-bells, covered them himself with leather, and sent them up the
next morning with directions to be used for half an hour morning and
evening.
And something--whether it was the dumb-bells, or the tonic, or
wholesome fear of the terrible doctor--kept Elsley for the next month
in better spirits and temper than he had been in for a long while.
Moreover, Tom set Lucia to coax him into walking with Headley. She
succeeded at last; and, on the whole, each of them soon found that
he had something to learn from the other. Elsley improved daily in
health, and Lucia wrote to Valencia flaming accounts of the wonderful
doctor who had been cast on shore in their world's end; and received
from her after a while this, amid much more--for fancy is not
exuberant enough to reproduce the whole of a young lady's letter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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