ed
never to cross its threshold. Why, after all, should he not cross its
threshold? I asked him if he would like to. 'What,' he growled, 'would
be the good?' I appealed, not in vain, to the imaginative side of his
nature. I went to the door of the hoarding, and explained matters to
the foreman; and presently, nodding to me solemnly, he passed with the
foreman through the gap between the doorposts. I saw him crossing the
excavated hall, crossing it along a plank, slowly and cautiously. His
attitude was very like Blondin's, but it had a certain tragic dignity
which Blondin's lacked. And that was the last I saw of him. I hailed a
cab and drove away. What became of the poor fellow I do not know. Often
as I returned to the ruin, and long as I loitered by it, him I never
saw again. Perhaps he really did go straight back to Australia. Or
perhaps he induced the workmen to bury him alive in the foundations.
His fate, whatever it was, haunts me.

'273'

This is an age of prescriptions. Morning after morning, from the
back-page of your newspaper, quick and uncostly cures for every human
ill thrust themselves wildly on you. The age of miracles is not past.
But I would raise no false hopes of myself. I am no thaumaturgist. Do
you awake with a sinking sensation in the stomach? Have you lost the
power of assimilating food? Are you oppressed with an indescribable
lassitude? Can you no longer follow the simplest train of thought? Are
you troubled throughout the night with a hacking cough? Are you--in
fine, are you but a tissue of all the most painful symptoms of all the
most malignant maladies ancient and modern? If so, skip this essay, and
try Somebody's Elixir. The cure that I offer is but a cure for
overwrought nerves--a substitute for the ordinary 'rest-cure.' Nor is
it absurdly cheap. Nor is it instant. It will take a week or so of your
time. But then, the 'rest-cure' takes at least a month. The scale of
payment for board and lodging may be, per diem, hardly lower than in
the 'rest-cure'; but you will save all but a pound or so of the very
heavy fees that you would have to pay to your doctor and your nurse (or
nurses). And certainly, my cure is the more pleasant of the two. My
patient does not have to cease from life. He is not undressed and
tucked into bed and forbidden to stir hand or foot during his whole
term. He is not forbidden to receive letters, or to read books, or to
look on any face but his nurse's (or nurses'). No