as no
acute disease but that my young friend was suffering from nervous
prostration, the result of long and severe mental suffering, from which
there was no remedy except time, prosperity and rest.

He said that Ernest must have broken down later on, but that he might
have gone on for some months yet. It was the suddenness of the relief
from tension which had knocked him over now.

"Cross him," said the doctor, "at once. Crossing is the great medical
discovery of the age. Shake him out of himself by shaking something else
into him."

I had not told him that money was no object to us and I think he had
reckoned me up as not over rich. He continued:--

"Seeing is a mode of touching, touching is a mode of feeding, feeding is
a mode of assimilation, assimilation is a mode of recreation and
reproduction, and this is crossing--shaking yourself into something else
and something else into you."

He spoke laughingly, but it was plain he was serious. He continued:--

"People are always coming to me who want crossing, or change, if you
prefer it, and who I know have not money enough to let them get away from
London. This has set me thinking how I can best cross them even if they
cannot leave home, and I have made a list of cheap London amusements
which I recommend to my patients; none of them cost more than a few
shillings or take more than half a day or a day."

I explained that there was no occasion to consider money in this case.

"I am glad of it," he said, still laughing. "The homoeopathists use
_aurum_ as a medicine, but they do not give it in large doses enough; if
you can dose your young friend with this pretty freely you will soon
bring him round. However, Mr Pontifex is not well enough to stand so
great a change as going abroad yet; from what you tell me I should think
he had had as much change lately as is good for him. If he were to go
abroad now he would probably be taken seriously ill within a week. We
must wait till he has recovered tone a little more. I will begin by
ringing my London changes on him."

He thought a little and then said:--

"I have found the Zoological Gardens of service to many of my patients. I
should prescribe for Mr Pontifex a course of the larger mammals. Don't
let him think he is taking them medicinally, but let him go to their
house twice a week for a fortnight, and stay with the hippopotamus, the
rhinoceros, and the elephants, till they begin to bore him. I find thes