"ATROPINE."

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 45, 30 March 1914, Page 6

"ATROPINE."

MORE TALK OF THE BODY OF YOUTH.

[Specially written for The Sun.]

4? n a- country racecourse, years ago, I saw a thoroughbred mare which galloped eight furlongs, won its race, and dropped dead—all on its twenty-first birthday. The body of youth is that sort, of beas t t: It will answer each time you urge it. Presently, if it be not dead, it will answer back.. The wrongful urging to which it will reply most quickly is when you burn out. its eyes over the printed page.

There can be no doubt about the rebellion of the body when the blurred print dances at midnight, and ait two the right eye sees one line and the left ano : ther; the daylight is a trial'and the raw glare of the electric bulbs an .annoyance to be borne. So y)>u go to the eye doctor and gaze upon his rows of printed letters, blink horribly at his mirror with its eye~ hole, and wonder*what the name he calls the trouble means. * You wear glasses thereafter, and find them a horrible nuisance until you become so used to them that you wear them in bed and break them in your sleep. Keeping to the old racing, simile, the body , of youth is now a handicap horse instead of one running weight-for-age.. The simile does not apply exactly. Only the most amateur trainer would have about turning th 6 brute out for a spell. The Body of Youth is put straightway at harder tasks, and does its best all the way. Things go well for long enough, but at last the poor patient thing enters another protest. Back you go to the doctor man — and being a trifle ttiian before, think this time of the bills to come and the awful horor of an. enforced rest. THE FEAR OF. PAIN.

The same performance of distant- letters, shining eye-piece, and varied lenses is repeated. This time there is no long word and written prescription. Instead you are told to call again and be ready for '' drops''; and you will not be able to see well the night after. . You protest that the thing is impossible—all fools argue with doctors. And except with the reckless and the utter fools the doctors win. The matter is arranged: three or four hours . may be required on the day chosen. Now the body of youth, brave beast as it is, shies horribly at the unknown, and trembles at fear of pain it lias not experienced (there are some things it can never, face cheerfully—anaesthetics for instance). Back you go, with knees as rigid as you can make them, and a stern sermon to yourself on the righteousness of suffering following folly, and the coming of salvation through suffering. Much in the. manner that the dipsomaniac talks to himself as lie signs liis sixth pledge, while wearing the fifth black eye that he has received fighting while drunk. In the waiting room they show you to the place of your trial, where waits another man who is say twenty v minutes ahead of you i]| his journey towards diagnosis —and new spectacles—and relief. His presence is a comfort. He has received the initial drops, and appears to be in no' great torment. It is your turn. You are to open your eyes, look upwards. The "drops" will fall upon the lowor lid edge. Then you are to pinch the tear ducts of your nose violently for thirty seconds lest the mixture get down to your tongue—heaven and the doctors know how —and give you an evil taste in the mouth. , The face, muscles twitch as you look up as stolidly as you can. The nurse. laugHs. The laugh .of a nurse is the greatest nerve tonic in the world —if you have not known many nurses. The "/irjcwß" fall coldly, painlessly. . You

/'rasp your nose, blink as directed —and it is over for ten minutes., The fellow sufferer has his second or third treatment. talk of sport and politics, and doctors—especially doctors. The ten minutes march quickly en route -to oblivion. More drops. IN THE SURGERY.

The nurse draws the blinds a trifle closer, and you talk on and on, wondering when something, will happen. You lift a blind 'to look out on a world that seems brighter than usual; and infinitely remote, as the world of normal folk always is from those who stare at it through windows of .hospitals or surgeries. It is the same street, the same trams, the same folkAgain there are " drops.'' Talk droops and is desultory as that between husband and wife on the way home after $, bad day at the races. V Your fellow victim drags —out hds watch. He stares at it, rubs his eyesadmits the fact. He turns to you—- " What time is it? Er—the ' drops' are affecting my eyes." You tell him. The desire to talk has faded absolutely. Ajgain "drops," and your watch chain has as many ends as a cat-o:'-nine-tails, and its face is as complex as a "psychic drawing.'' The other fellow has a handkerchief over his eyes, and your own lids droop to block the dim light. It has keen hours, and hours, and hours. There are pictures on the walls—such .pictures —blurred foolish things. Nothing matters much: not even your own carelessness of the things that might be worth remembering. / . > You. shut your eyes, and grope for some similar experience. You have had none, yet you have seen it all—Where ? The slow mind gropes in its pigeon holes and you recall the house of Suh-yat-sen (which was'nt his name) and the folk who slept on his rolls of plotting, and let the hours drift past.. Horrible thought —perhaps you are pulling faces like them. Anyhow it doesn't matter. You doze, and think of Kipling's forgotten, good sketch '' The Black Smoke."'' Your state is the state of the man who talks therein; only he drowsed on for months whereas you shall be yourself again—presently. The other man is taken off for examination. You drowse on, until 1 your turn comes. Then you laugh—all your drowsiness has been nerves'?,.merely: you can walk and think and talk, you can even see. The examination is rather longer than the others, more careful, more detailed, with further and other starings in the. red depths that lie behind the pupil. As a man of my trade I have watched the face, hands, eyes,' throat of the man whose actions mattered. And knew that all was well, and that mine was not so much an interesting case let alone one that was serious.

THROUGH NEW GLASSES. To the streets again, where the light seemed bright as the flashing of imagined swords, and the taxi-caibs stood a-roW, blurred and obscure as those unlighted carts which heave up on country roads through the mist of fine, wind-driven rain, on nights that are very dark. At home they laugh at your wide eyes, all black pupil, and you loaf , through an empty afternoon. The pain comes at five when you realise —tout a coup—that there are no newspapers for you, ■ that the world must spin on and you know nothing of it for the little space that you will be half-blind. The little matter irritates abominably. You find someone to read to you —which is worse. They read all the wrong things, and it is not for the half-blind to steer the uninitiated through the bewildering bad make-up of a journal whic-li hides its pearls from such of its readers as are not most insistent diggers. You fret and fume—and get more angry when the well-mean-ing amateur .talks about the Braille svstem.

In the twilight you tramp abroad, infinitely alone,'with figures tliat pass as the half-formed models! of a sculptor, lacking detail. The lights, make compositions with the half-seen buildings* and the wide streets gain a

dignity more than that of the town of cottages, and fences, and stucco buildings in the harsh wash of sunlight. Only there remains the dread that you will not be able to court sleep by reading. ' ." Another thing that does not mattersSleep, true woman; who had often held back after long wooing, came unsought and was prodigal of her good gifts. The day brought detail and comfolt—jproinise of the normal soon to be regained. ... ■ Another twenty-four hours and all was as before.

All exactly as before. The eyes rtare through new glasses, and show that beast, the body, of youth, the way to other hurdles and other tumbles. C. G. T.