r, above all, is he
condemned to the loathsome necessity of eating so much food as to make
him dread the sight of food. Doubtless, the grim, inexorable process of
the 'rest-cure' is very good for him who is strong enough and brave
enough to bear it, and rich enough to pay for it. I address myself to
the frailer, cowardlier, needier man. Instead of ceasing from life, and
entering purgatory, he need but essay a variation in life. He need but
go and stay by himself in one of those vast modern hotels which abound
along the South and East coasts.

You are disappointed? All simple ideas are disappointing. And all good
cures spring from simple ideas.

The right method of treating overwrought nerves is to get the patient
away from himself--to make a new man of him; and this trick can be done
only by switching him off from his usual environment, his usual habits.
The ordinary rest-cure, by its very harshness, intensifies a man's
personality at first, drives him miserably within himself; and only by
its long duration does it gradually wear him down and build him up
anew. There is no harshness in the vast hotels which I have
recommended. You may eat there as little as you like, especially if you
are en pension. Letters may be forwarded to you there; though, unless
your case is a very mild one, I would advise you not to leave your
address at home. There are reading-rooms where you can see all the
newspapers; though I advise you to ignore them. You suffer under no
sense of tyranny. And yet, no sooner have you signed your name in the
visitors' book, and had your bedroom allotted to you, than you feel
that you have surrendered yourself irrepleviably. It is not necessary
to this illusion that you should pass under an assumed name, unless you
happen to be a very eminent actor, or cricketer, or other idol of the
nation, whose presence would flutter the young persons at the bureau.
If your nervous breakdown be (as it more likely is) due to merely
intellectual distinction, these young persons will mete out to you no
more than the bright callous civility which they mete out impartially
to all (but those few) who come before them. To them you will be a
number, and to yourself you will have suddenly become a number--the
number graven on the huge brass label that depends clanking from the
key put into the hand of the summoned chambermaid. You are merely (let
us say) 273.

Up you go in the lift, realising, as for the first time, your
insign