t reader_; _and will lend additional
weight to the lesson that the story teaches_.

LONDON, _August_, 1889.

[Picture: Graphic of three men in a rowing boat]

CHAPTER I.

Three invalids.--Sufferings of George and Harris.--A victim to one
hundred and seven fatal maladies.--Useful prescriptions.--Cure for liver
complaint in children.--We agree that we are overworked, and need
rest.--A week on the rolling deep?--George suggests the
River.--Montmorency lodges an objection.--Original motion carried by
majority of three to one.

There were four of us--George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and
Montmorency. We were sitting in my room, smoking, and talking about how
bad we were--bad from a medical point of view I mean, of course.

We were all feeling seedy, and we were getting quite nervous about it.
Harris said he felt such extraordinary fits of giddiness come over him at
times, that he hardly knew what he was doing; and then George said that
_he_ had fits of giddiness too, and hardly knew what _he_ was doing.
With me, it was my liver that was out of order. I knew it was my liver
that was out of order, because I had just been reading a patent
liver-pill circular, in which were detailed the various symptoms by which
a man could tell when his liver was out of order. I had them all.

It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine
advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am
suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most
virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly
with all the sensations that I have ever felt.

[Picture: Man reading book] I remember going to the British Museum one
day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a
touch--hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I
came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the
leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget
which was the first distemper I plunged into--some fearful, devastating
scourge, I know--and, before I had glanced half down the list of
"premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.

I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of
despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever--read
the symptoms--discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for
months without knowing it--wo