thing, but I
never knew a doctor called into any case yet but what it transpired
that another day's delay would have rendered cure hopeless. Our medical
guide, philosopher, and friend is like the hero in a melodrama--he
always comes upon the scene just, and only just, in the nick of time. It
is Providence, that is what it is.

Well, as I was saying, I was very ill and was ordered to Buxton for a
month, with strict injunctions to do nothing whatever all the while
that I was there. "Rest is what you require," said the doctor, "perfect
rest."

It seemed a delightful prospect. "This man evidently understands my
complaint," said I, and I pictured to myself a glorious time--a four
weeks' _dolce far niente_ with a dash of illness in it. Not too much
illness, but just illness enough--just sufficient to give it the flavor
of suffering and make it poetical. I should get up late, sip chocolate,
and have my breakfast in slippers and a dressing-gown. I should lie out
in the garden in a hammock and read sentimental novels with a melancholy
ending, until the books should fall from my listless hand, and I should
recline there, dreamily gazing into the deep blue of the firmament,
watching the fleecy clouds floating like white-sailed ships across
its depths, and listening to the joyous song of the birds and the low
rustling of the trees. Or, on becoming too weak to go out of doors,
I should sit propped up with pillows at the open window of the
ground-floor front, and look wasted and interesting, so that all the
pretty girls would sigh as they passed by.

And twice a day I should go down in a Bath chair to the Colonnade to
drink the waters. Oh, those waters! I knew nothing about them then,
and was rather taken with the idea. "Drinking the waters" sounded
fashionable and Queen Anne-fied, and I thought I should like them. But,
ugh! after the first three or four mornings! Sam Weller's description of
them as "having a taste of warm flat-irons" conveys only a faint idea of
their hideous nauseousness. If anything could make a sick man get well
quickly, it would be the knowledge that he must drink a glassful of them
every day until he was recovered. I drank them neat for six consecutive
days, and they nearly killed me; but after then I adopted the plan of
taking a stiff glass of brandy-and-water immediately on the top of them,
and found much relief thereby. I have been informed since, by various
eminent medical gentlemen, that the alcohol mus