LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2398, 9 December 1881, Page 4

LITERATURE.

SICK HEADACHE. A Hygienic Love Stoey. [‘Harper’s Bazaar,’] ( Concluded !.) * I am Allis Putnam,’ said the phantom of delight, coming forward, with frank hand ontstretohed, * and I bag your pardon for coming unannounced, But we found the late train did not connect. And mamma said Aunt Larkin could not be taken at a disadvantage. Having come, my professional nose sniffed action at once. Sarah was the best of assistants’—shedding a brilliant smile on that staring neophyte, which Nathan was inclined to consider a waste of riches— 1 and between us we have really set your mother on her feet again. Now I’m going to administer my next remedy, and then you may talk with her as long as she’ll listen. I think we can persuade her out on this lovely verandah.’ And the doctor disappeared with her savory broth. ‘ Don’t she beat all ?’ inquired the bustling Sarah, intent on the impending supper. * Pooty’s that wild rose, an’ smarter’n lightnin’, ’Tain’t strange the old doctors, that jest look owlish, an’ don’t do no good, don’t want women inter the business. They’d steal the trade in no time There’s sour cream enough, an’ I told her I’d make some tip top llapjacks for supper. “Don’t you take aa extry step for me, Sarah,’’ she says. “ I'm goin’ to feast on brown bread an’ milk while I stay.” There ain’t nothin’ bettern ’n sour cream fiapjicks, but she’s so ’fraid o’ givin’ trouble ! That’s what I call a real lady ’ If Nathan guessed that the name of this txtollsd delight was written on Dr. Allis’ Index Expurgatorius, he nevertheless ate his own share with due satisfaction, and equally enjoyed tho rich preserves, the fruity cake, the crumbling tarts, and the delicate, strong tea, set forth in the best china to honor the visitor, who, much to Sarah’s disappointment, elected brown bread and milk after all.

How it was brought about neither Aunt Larkin nor Nathan could have told; but Obadiah’s Sarah, whose Declaration of Independence had always read that she wouldn’t live out for nobody,’ found herself permanently installed in that cool and spotless kitchen within three days of Dr. Allis’ advent. Auut Larkin having repeated for thirty years that she ‘didn’t see the sense of havin’ a girl clatter in’ round to pick up after,’ and her son being accustomed to accept as final whatever domestic views hia mother promulgated, received the new dispensation with submission on the one part and rejoicing on the other. The doctor’s luggage appeared to consist in great part in 1 Franklin t'quaro ’ novels, and the infinite riches, in a little room, of the ‘Half hour Series.’ And when Nathan came home one afternoon to find his mother comfortably rocking in her large chair on the verandah, deep In the fortunes of the ‘Greatest Heiress in England,’ instead of stirring up pancakes or making button-holes, he said to himself, * Allis is a witch, bless her !’ Tea. already it had gone so far that the unwomanly doctor was ‘ Allis ’to him. And at tea this studious young sage, who spent all his leisure in gardening among classic roots, announced that as to-morrow wonld be Saturday, he was sure they could not do better than to drive over to Bethesda Springs, all of them, and spend an Idle day la that great V*bl y Fair,

But to-morrow It was Nathan’s turn. His head was chained to hia pillow with shackles of pain. It was seasickness, ha said to himself, without tho palsy of the will. It was fever, without tho blessed intervals of unconsciousness It was the rack, tho thumb screw, (he iron boot. If tho faint stirrings of desire might be called hope, he hoped his mol her would not prescribe magnesia, or bring him the dreaded * cup o’ tea,.’ By and by came Dr. Allis, with noiseless presence, cool hands, low voice, and potent prescription. As the slow hours dragged on the headache yielded grudgingly, irresolutely, with spasms of reasserting power. Next day Nathan was free from pain, but tired rut and despondent. Sitting In tho cool dusk of the honey suckles, ho said, ‘ I’d give a thrd of my life, Allis, to buy off these headaches f-om the rest of it. Somatimes I think they will shut ma out from any c.-.raor whatever. Can’t you cure them, little Galen ?’ ‘No, Herr Professor, not while you invite them, solicit them, compel them.’ ‘I, Allis ? I don’t give them an inch of vantage. I rise early, go to bed early, don’t oven smoke, and fight them to death when they come ’ 4 Nathan, I should like to talk to you for your good, though you’ll hate me for it. You’ve half-forgotten that I am a female doctor, and as a person I am less objectionable than you feared. ’Xwere pity of my life to disturb this state of amity. But at heart I’m professional above all things, and you see I can’t advise your mother lest I seem disrespectful.’ , Lay on, Macduff,’ I dare say I shan’t know when I’m hit. And if Ido feel ‘ the whiff and wind of your sword I won’t whimper.’ * Nathan, do you know that your mother killed those six children whose little graves she showed me to-day ?’ ‘ Allis!’ * Yes ; although she would have died for any one of them. And but that you were tougher fibred, as well as finer fibred than the rest, you would have completed the hecatomb. Your grandmother, mamma says, was exactly like your mother, all ‘faculty,’ energy and thrift. She would clean two rooms in a day—paint, windows and all—churn, get the dinner for a great family of ‘men folks,’ take care of her children, and make a pair of pantaloons before bedtime. Of course. she was

* worry in’,’ with all her nerves on the surface, and of course, she had to bequeath to her girls this same overwrought mental and physical condition. Aunt Larkin, with less muscular strength than her mother, has emulated her achievements, and half starved hereof, has half starved her children, first, in their inheritance, and second, in their rearing.’ ‘ Allis, you are wild. Mother and grandmother before her, made generous living a primal doty.’ ‘That’s just what I siy, child. Generous living, is sure to be semi starvation You have had the finest of bread, and delicious, fatal ‘light biscuit,’and cake, and preserves, and pastry, and insidious flapjacks, and rich doughnuts, and incessant coffee, and salt fish fried with pork scraps, and heavy ‘ boiled dishes ’ veiled In a film of fat, and fresh meats fried, and sausages, and spare-rib, tovjours spare-rib. What has your brain found in this Barmecide feast ? What food for your delicate, tense nerves ? Do you think it any wonder that the collapse, as it were, from inanition twice a month or so ? All your life yon have gorged yourself (pardon the expression, but I am in a temper—professional of course), on hydro carbon aceions foods, imposing monstrous tasks on our rebellious liver, which ‘strikes,’ and spreads disaffection throughout the ranks of its associates. You are starving for vital phosphates. Didn’t you study physiology at school ? Perhaps you teach it, even, and what do you cart for its sacred teachings ? Yes, I mean sacred. There’s a religion of the body, let me tell you, unregenerate boy. I've no doubt you render into beautiful English that story or Marsyas and Apollo, and what do you know or care about your own skill, that texture of miraculous shill ? You read that Minerva sprang from the brain of Jove. But why should you expect wisdom to be born from yours ? Yon use it without mercy sixteen hours a day. You are subject to that fatal drain which stupidity is always making upon cleverness. There’s no vampire like it. You never play. Why don’t you swim, ride, dance, row, play base ball, practice archery, whist, and go to town every vacation for an instructive course of theatres? ’ * When, Allis ? Why, there isn’t time. I leave out half the work I ought to do as it 18/ ‘ Ought I ought! Oh dear ! how shall we stop the roll of that Juggernaut which crushes all your race ? Yon have no pure joy in existence. It doesn’t even seem that yon have any love of life in itself. It’s only useful for the work yon can wring ont of it. Yon make yourself lees than yonr moods and tenses, less than yon butter and cheese. Time 1 If there Isn’t time to get well and keep well, you’d better change for eternity, as you will, roy dear young friend, if yon oan’t reform. I know that the kind of headache which you and Annt Larkin are cursed with never comes except with overwork and nnder-feeding. She must go on to suffer, poor thing, though less, I hope. Rat you can cure yourself if yon will. Obey me, and you shall be a new man in a year, giving me that delight in your growing health which an artist feels in bis growing picture/ ‘Dear Allis, I abhor bran, and mother would never cook It.’

‘Dear simpleton, who asked you? No, you shall have delicious soups, and inviting meats, and salads of celestial lineage, and vegetables, and milk, and such bread as yon never tasted, made of flour whose whole value has not paid tribute to the miller.’ ‘ But Obadiah’s Sarah— 1

* Oh, yes, sho can. I’ll teach her. We can do It all, and more, If only yon will persuade your mother that it is my lark, or your whim, or what you will, so that we do not seem to subvert the law of generations, or reproach the old order with the new. Don’t you sea what a new creature she is since I have made her rest ? And when she says, plaintively, aa in her moments of rebellion she does, ‘ The house is not what it was’ (if peradventure, Sarah has forgotten to set the salt box Jon the right hand of the sugar crock, instead of the left, I reply, “ Mover mind, dear Aunt Larkin, the home is more. Did you ever see Nathan so happy about you, and now that yon tuok up your feet and read in the afternoons, or go out riding with me ?’ And then she is silenced, and ([takes another turn at “ The Maid of oker ” with visible satisfaction. Do you suppose anything in life would make her so happy as for yon to escape your headaches ? And I have shown you the way.’ ‘ Having put myself in your hands, Dr. Putnam, 1 am bound to follow your prescription I suppose. The pieservea shall mould upon their shelves, the cake box shall rust upon its hinges, flapjacks from henceforth be called accursed, and the majestic shades of Sylvester Graham and Dio Lewis command my obedience. * Slowly their phantom arise before us, Our loftier brothers, but one in blood ; At bed and table they lord it o’er ns With looks of beauty and words of good.’ ‘ Admirable, Master Nathan ! I can stay two weeks longer to sea my remedies in action, and then yon are to be on honor. At the Thanksgiving vacation come to town, and I will administer the course of theatres advised, and measure your improvement. To-morrow afternoon, if yon please, we will go to the top of that beautiful purple hill, up which you have not had the civility to invite me. As a young lady, and yonr guest, I could not, of course, mention the omission ; hnt as your physician, and in a strictly remedial manner, I proceed to rectify It.’

From that day a new king arose over Egypt. No sparkling brook bid itself so cunningly among the loaves that Nathan and Allis did not find it in the long Summer afternoons, when work was done. No hill was too difficult for their nimble feet, no berry patch too far, no lily-bearing pond too Inaccessible, Sometimes Aunt Larkin joined them in their frolic, wondering at herself for electing play when work waited to be done, feeling herself apostate to the faith of her fathers, yet delighting in the fun of these 1 children, and rejoicing to see her son so brown and hungry. Then Doctor Allis had to say good-bye, and betake herself to town, evolving what she called her “office” from a confusion of books, pictures, flowers, patterns of wall paper, white muslin, and the spoils of her life abroad. When Nathan saw it, in November, his notions of the fitness of professional life for woman underwent farther diseategratloa.

‘ Nothing could be more refined,’ he said to himaeif. ‘My mother’s house, even, does not look half so feminine/ But if the canny Mrs Putnam had expected that her pretty and professional daughter would establish herself la another vocation when she sent her on a missionary visit among the Franklin hills, hers was a hope deferred. For it was a year after this before the correspondence, of which a specimen iti appended, enriched the department— HE TO HES. “ ... c o I have been offered the Professorship of the- Classics at College. Will you come, too ? I would not ask you while my lines were fixed at Franklin, wanting to leave tyon free to live your own life of books and and work, which there you could net do. At the society is delightful, and I think you would bo happy. If it is your wish still to practice your profession I have no more right, as I trust I have no more wish, to object, than you would have concerning mine. And, indeed, I hold that there is no nobler work in the world than yours. Personally, it would ill become me to limit your beneficence. For know, Doctor Allis, that I have not had a veslige of siok headache in six months. I said 1 would give a third of my life to save the other two from its ravages. Take, O Doctor, thrice the fee; Taka, I givo it eagerly ; Fcr, invisible to thee, Davila blue have gone from me.

Does this not sound like a love letter ? If I do not say that I adore you with all my heart, and soul, and mind, and strength, It is because you found it out, as you found out everything else about me, by witchcraft, I believe, months on months ago. And If I seem too jolly for the attitude of prayer I assume, it is because the hope of having you always has gone to my brain (weakened as who knows better than you, by intervals of agonizing pain from my birth), and intoxicated me, as with the mead of the gods. Would not 1 Doctor Larkin’ serve every end as well as * Doctor Putnam 1 • Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Cx-aar. 1 1 nse this form of entreaty rather than another more familiar to poets and lovers because yon assured mo that, before all things, yon were professional. My little darling, I am hedged about with danger. At the other day I was even offered and pressed upon with—Pie ! If I have a housekeeper, I doubt not that poisonous compound will be dally on the table, and presently, in an nnvigilant moment, perhaps when I am last in reflection on a doubtful ictus, I shall fall! My life, or at least my digestion, which in your view is more than life, I lay at your feet. We are rich for country folks, little Ailis. I have bought a charming house at , and the receptionroom seems to be peculiarly eligible as an office. You shall have it on the most favorable terms, and permanently, by addressing at once, ‘ Yonr devoted, ‘ N. L,’ SUE TO FTIM. ‘ Dear Sir, —My diagnosis is favorable. Your summary of symptoms I find satisfactory. No headache in six months. Good. A capacity to laugh over serious issues, and make the best of things, anch as would have been quite impossible to you a year or so ago, Bettor. A hopeful, because gradually developed, sense of the necessity of obedience to your medical adviser in all things. Boat. What yon say of the advantages of the office yon offer me has received my attention. I consider myself well placed, with a rapidly growing practice. Bnt as my greatest success has been in the relief of maladies of the nerves and digestion, and as a college town is a settlement of dyspeptics, martyrs to sick headache, the temptation to enlarge knowledge in my specialty Is overmastering. I will therefore take the office on the terms proposed, reserving to myself the right to use it for boudoir, reception room, study, or private growlery for the Professor of Greek and Latin at —— College, should it seem to me advisable. I will trouble you to have the key ready whenever I demand it; and remain, with recommendation to follow treatment as previously advised. Truly yours,

A.P. 4 P.S.—lt was the belief of the ancients that the liver was the seat of the affections. Uhls was some time a paradox, but now the time gives it proof.'