Читать книгу: «Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself. Vol. II (of 2)», страница 14

CHAPTER III.
THE EMPLOYMENTS OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN OF FORTUNE

And now, having mentioned tedium of existence as being an evil to which I soon felt myself subject, I will say that it was one I found more oppressive than the reader can readily imagine. I had nothing in the world to do, and, as it happened, my disposition did not lead me to seek any thing. I was, in a word, the very man my sister had so reproachfully called me in our first conversation – that is, the laziest man in all Virginia; and, upon reflection, I can think of no person in the world who would bear a comparison with me in that particular, except myself. "None but himself can be his parallel," as somebody or other says, I don't know who, a sentiment that is supposed to be absurd, inasmuch as it involves an impossibility, but which becomes good sense when applied to me. In my original condition, in the body in which I was first introduced to life, I certainly had a great aversion to all troublesome employments, whether of business or amusement, being supposed by many persons to be then what as many considered me now – to wit, the laziest man in my state. Whether I was lazier as Sheppard Lee the Jerseyman or Arthur Megrim the Virginian, I am not able to say. In both cases indolence was at the bottom of all my troubles. There was this difference, however, between the two conditions, that whereas I had felt in one the evils of laziness to a poor man, I was now to discover in the other what were its evils to a man of fortune.

My chief employments in the body of Mr. Arthur Megrim were eating and sleeping; and I certainly should have done nothing else, had I been allowed to follow my own humours. Eating and sleeping, therefore, consumed the greater portion of my time; but it could not consume all; nor could the residue be filled up by the occasional excursions in my curricle, and the still more unfrequent strolls through the village, into which I was driven by my affectionate sister, or cajoled by her coadjutor, the doctor, in their zealous care of my digestive apparatus. As for visits and visitations, I abhorred them all, whether they related to the bustling young gentlemen of the neighbourhood, or the loquacious ladies, old and young, who cultivated the friendship of my sister.

Employ myself, however, as I might, there always remained a portion of each day which I could not get rid of, either in bed or at the table. On such occasions I was devoured by ennui, and thought that even existence was an infliction – that it was hard work to live. According to my sister's account, I was a scholar and a genius; in which case I ought to have found employment enough of an intellectual nature, either in books or the reflections of my own mind. I certainly had a very large and fine library in my house, and there was scarce a week passed by in which I did not receive a huge bundle of the newest publications from a book-seller, who had long had it in charge thus to supply me. Of these I usually read the title-pages, and then turned them over to my sister, or, which was more common, lent them to my neighbours, who, male and female together, came flocking to borrow the day after, and sometimes the day before, the arrival of each package, taking good care to rob me of those that were most interesting. The truth is, if I ever had had the power of reading, I had now lost it. Books only set me nodding.

As for exercising my mind in reflections of its own, that was even more laborious than reading; and I contracted a dislike to it, particularly as my mind wore itself out every night in dreaming, that being a result of the goodly suppers I used to eat. It is true, that I one day fell into a sudden ferment, and being inspired, actually seized upon pen and paper, and wrote a poem in blank verse, forty lines long, with which I was so pleased that I read it to Tibbikens and my sister, both of whom were in raptures with it, the former carrying it off to the editor of the village paper, who printed it with such a eulogium upon its merits, as made me believe Byron was a fool to me, while all the young ladies immediately paid my sister Ann a visit, that they might tell me how they admired the beautiful piece, and lament that I wrote so seldom. I forget what the poem was about; but I remember I was so delighted with the praise bestowed on it, that I resolved to write another, which, however, I did not do, having unfortunately begun it in rhyme, which was difficult, and my fit of inspiration and energy having left me before I got through with my next dinner. It was my writing verses, I suppose, that caused me to be called a genius; but it seems I was too lazy to be inspired more than once or twice a year.

I relapsed into ennui, and, truly, I became more tired of it before it was done with me, than was ever a labourer of his hod or mattock.

CHAPTER IV.
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE INCONVENIENCES OF HAVING A DIGESTIVE APPARATUS

But ennui was not the worst of the evils that clouded my happy lot. Some touches of that diabolical disorder, the curse of the rich man, which, as my sister so often gave me to know, had threatened the peace of Mr. Arthur Megrim several times before, now began to assail my own serenity, and threw gall and ratsbane over my dinners. I had slighted her warnings, and despised her advice, and now I was to pay the price of indiscretion. In a word, that very digestive apparatus, on which she read me a lecture at least thrice a day, began to grumble, refuse to do duty, and strike; though, unlike the industrious artisans, who were in all quarters setting it the example, it struck, not for high wages, of which it had had a surfeit, but for low ones, in which, however, its master was scarce able to oblige it, having an uncommonly good appetite most of the time; and even when he had not, not well knowing how to dispose of his time unless at the table.

My faithful sister, who had been so constant to predict, was the first to detect the coming evil, and, step by step, she pointed it out to my unwilling observation.

"Arthur," said she, one morning as we sat at breakfast, "your eyelid is winking."

"Augh – " said I, "yes; it is winking."

"It is a sign," said she, "your digestive apparatus is getting out of order!"

"Augh!" said I, "hang the digestive apparatus!" for I was tired of hearing it mentioned.

"Arthur," said she, the next day, "you are beginning to look yellow and bilious!"

"Yes," said I; on which she declared that "the alkalis of my biliary fluids" – she had studied the whole theory and nomenclature of dyspepsy out of a book the doctor lent her – "were beginning to fail to coalesce, in the natural chymical way, with the acids of the chymous mass; and that no better argument could be desired to prove that my digestive apparatus was getting out of order." And she concluded by recommending me to regulate my diet, and fall back upon bran bread and hickory ashes.

In short, my dear sister assailed me with a pertinacity equal to the disease itself, so that I came, in a short time, to consider her as one of its worst symptoms.

To add to my woes, Dr. Tibbikens began to go over to her opinion, to talk of my digestive apparatus, and to drop hints in relation to bran bread and hickory ashes, which would decidedly have robbed him of my friendship, had I not at last found myself unable to do without him.

To make a long story short, I will omit a detailed history of my tribulations during the winter, and skip at once to the following spring; at the opening of which I found myself, young, rich, and independent as I was, the bond-slave and victim of a malady to which the woes of age and penury are as the sting of moschetoes to the teeth of raging tigers.

Reader, I have, in the course of this history, related to thee many miseries which it was my lot, on different occasions, to encounter, and some of them of a truly cruel and insupportable character. Could I, however, give thee a just conception of the ills I was now doomed to suffer, which, of a certainty, I cannot do, unless thou art at this moment the victim of a similar infliction, I am convinced thou wouldst agree with me, that I had now stumbled upon a grief that concentrated in itself all others of which human nature is capable.

Dost thou know what it is to have thy stomach stuffed, like an ostrich's, with old iron hoops and brickbats – or feeling as if it were? to have it now drowned in vinegar, now scorched as with hot potatoes? thy head filled with achings, dizziness, and streaks of lightning? thy heart transformed into the heels of a hornpipe-dancer, and plying thy ribs, lungs, and diaphragm with the energy of an artiste in the last agony?

If thou dost, then thou wilt know that bodily distress, of which the above miseries form but a small portion, is the least of the evils of dyspepsy – that its most horrible symptoms develop themselves in the mind. What care those devils, falsely called blue (for they are as black as midnight, or the bile which engenders them), for the youth, the wealth, the independence, the gentility of a man whose digestive apparatus is out of order? The less cause he may have in reality to be dissatisfied with his lot, the more cause they will find him; the greater and more legitimate his claims to be a happy man, the more fierce and determined their efforts to make him a miserable one.

The serenity of my mind gave way before the attacks of these monsters; sleeping and waking, by day and by night, they assailed me with equal pertinacity and fury. If I slept, it was only to be tormented by demon and caco-demon – to be ridden double by incubus and succuba, under whose bestriding limbs I felt like a Shetland pony carrying two elephants. My dreams, indeed, so varied and terrific were the images with which they afflicted me, I can compare to nothing but the horrors or last delirium of a toper. Hanging, drowning, and tumbling down church-steeples were the common and least frightful of the fancies that crowded my sleeping brain: now I was blown up in a steamboat, or run over by a railroad car; now I was sticking fast in a burning chimney, scorching and smothering, and now, head downwards, in a hollow tree, with a bear below snapping at my nose; now I was plastered up in a thick wall, with masons hard at work running the superstructure up higher, and now I was enclosed in a huge apple-dumpling, boiling in a pot over a hot fire. One while I was crushed by a boa constrictor; another, perishing by inches in the mouth of a Bengal tiger; and, again, I was in the hands of Dr. Tibbikens and his scientific coadjutors of the village, who were dissecting me alive. In short, there was no end to the torments I endured in slumber, and nothing could equal them except those that beset me while awake.

A miserable melancholy seized upon my spirits, in which those very qualifications which everybody envied me the possession of were regarded with disgust, as serving only the purpose of adding to my tortures. What cared I for youth, when it opened only a longer vista of living wretchedness? What to me was the wealth which I could not enjoy? which had been given me only to tantalize? And as for independence, the idea was a mockery; the servitude of a galley-slave was freedom, unlimited license, compared with my subjection to dyspepsy, and – for the truth must be confessed – the doctor; to whom I was at last obliged to submit, nolens volens.

CHAPTER V.
THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED, WITH AN ACCOUNT OF SEVERAL SURPRISING TRANSFORMATIONS

Whether Dr. Tibbikens treated me secundum artem or not, I cannot say; but true it is, that instead of getting better, I grew gradually worse, until my melancholy became a confirmed hypochondriasis, and fancies gloomy and dire, wild and strange, seized upon my brain, and conjured up new afflictions.

Getting up early one morning, I found, to my horror, that I had been, in my sleep, converted into a coffee-pot; a transformation which I thought so much more extraordinary than any other I had ever undergone, that I sent for my sister Ann, and imparted to her the singular secret.

"Oh!" said she, bursting into tears, "it is all on account of your unfortunate digestive apparatus. But, oh! brother Arthur, don't let such notions get into your head. A coffee-pot, indeed! that's too ridiculous!"

I was quite incensed at her skepticism, but still more so at the conduct of Dr. Tibbikens, who, being sent for, hearing of my misfortune, and seeing me stand in the middle of the floor, with my left arm akimbo, like a crooked handle, and the right stretched out in the manner of a spout, seized me by the shoulders and marched me towards a great hickory fire that was blazing on the hearth.

"What do you mean, Tibbikens?" said I.

"To warm you," said he: "I like my coffee hot; and so I intend to boil you over again on that very fire!"

At these words I started, trembled, and awoke as from a dream, assuring him I had made a great mistake, and was no more of a coffee-pot than he was; an assurance that doubtless prevented my undergoing an ordeal which I was neither saint nor fire-king enough to endure with impunity. Indeed, I was quite ashamed of having permitted such a delusion to enter my brain.

The next day, however, a still more afflicting change came over me; for having tried to read a book, in which I was interrupted by a great dog barking in the street, I was seized with a rage of a most unaccountable nature, and falling on my hands and feet, I responded to the animal's cries, and barked in like manner, being quite certain that I was as much of a dog as he. Nay, my servant Epaminondas coming in, I seized him by the leg and would have worried him, had he not run roaring out of the chamber; and my sister Ann coming to the door, I flew at her with such ferocity that she was fain to escape down stairs. The doctor was again sent for, and popping suddenly into the chamber, he rushed upon me with a great horsewhip he had snatched up along the way, and fell to belabouring me without mercy, crying out all the while, "Get out, you rascal, get out!"

"Villain!" said I, jumping on my hind legs, and dancing about to avoid his lashes, "what do you mean?"

"To whip you down stairs, you cur!" said he, flourishing his weapon again.

On which I assured him as earnestly as I could that "I was no cur whatever;" and indeed I was quite cured of the fancy.

My next conceit was (the morning being cold, and my fire having gone out), that I was an icicle; which fancy was dispelled by the doctor saluting me with a bucket of water, on pretence of melting me; and I was doubtless melted all the sooner for being drenched in water exactly at the freezing-point.

After this I experienced divers other transformations, being now a chicken, now a loaded cannon, now a clock, now a hamper of crockery-ware, and a thousand things besides; all which conceits the doctor cured without much difficulty, and with as little consideration for the roughness of his remedies. Being a chicken, he attempted to wring my neck, calling me a dunghill rooster, fit only for the pot; he discharged the cannon from my fancies by clapping a red-hot poker to my nose; and the crate of crockery he broke to pieces by casting it on the floor, to the infinite injury of my bones. The clock at first gave him some trouble, until, pronouncing it to have a screw out of order, he seized upon one of my front teeth with a pair of pincers, and by a single wrench dissipated the delusion for ever.

CHAPTER VI.
AN ACCOUNT OF THE WOES OF AN EMPEROR OF FRANCE, WHICH HAVE NEVER BEFORE APPEARED IN HISTORY

In short (for I do not design particularizing my transformations further), there was no conceit entered my brain which Dr. Tibbikens did not cure by a conceit; until, one morning, by some mysterious revelation, the nature and means of which can only be guessed at, I found that I had been elected the Emperor of France, and announced my intention to set sail for my government immediately, in the first ship of the line which the American executive could put at my disposal.

This fancy quite disconcerted Dr. Tibbikens, and I heard him say to my sister, "He is a gone case now, – quite mad, I assure you;" which expression so much offended me, that I ordered him from my presence, and told him that, were it not for my respect for the American government, whose subject he was, I would have his head for his impertinence.

But wo betide the day! the doctor returned to me in less than an hour, bringing with him every physician in the village, who, having looked at me a moment, went into another apartment, where they argued hotly together for another hour. At the expiration of this they returned, led by Tibbikens, who, to my great satisfaction, now fell on his knees, and "begged my imperial majesty's pardon for presuming to request that I would allow myself to be dressed in my imperial majesty's robe of state;" which robe of state, although I was surprised at its plainness (for it was of a coarse linen texture, without gold lace or jewels, and of a very strange shape – closed in front and open in the rear), I immediately consented to put on, so pleased was I with the homage of the doctor.

If I was surprised at the appearance of the imperial garment, much more was I astonished when, having slipped my arms into its sleeves, I found them, – that is, my arms, – suddenly pinioned, buried, sewed up, as it were, among the folds of the robe, so that, when it was tied behind me, as it immediately was, I was as well secured as when I was tied up for execution on a former occasion. Alas! the disappointment to my pride! I understood the whole matter in a moment: my imperial robe of state was nothing less nor more than a strait waistcoat, constructed upon the spur of the moment, but still on scientific principles.

And now, being entirely at the mercy of the deceitful Tibbikens, I was seized upon with a strong hand, my head shaved and thrust into a sack of pounded ice, from which it was not taken until after a six days' congelation, and then only to be transferred to a nightcap of Spanish flies, exceedingly comfortable on the first application, but which, within a few hours, I had every reason to pronounce the most execrable covering in existence. And what made it still more intolerable, I never complained of it that Tibbikens did not assure me "it was the imperial coronet of France," and then exclaim, in the words of some old play, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

And then I was physicked and starved, phlebotomized, soused in cold water and scalded in hot, rubbed down with rough blanket cloths and hair-brushes as stiff as wool-cards, scorched with mustard plasters, bombarded by an electrical machine, and in general attacked by every weapon of art which the zeal of my tormentors could bring into play against me.

In this way, if I was not cured of my disease, I was, at least, brought into subjection. I ceased complaining, which I did at first, and with becoming indignation, of the traitorous and sacrilegious violence done to my anointed body, for such I at first considered it. The arguments of my persecutors, however, to prove the contrary, were irresistible, being chiefly syllogisms, of which the major proposition was calomel and jalap, the minor mustard plasters and blisters, and the conclusion cold water, phlebotomy, and flax-seed tea. The same arguments, varied categorically according to circumstances, convinced me that if my imperial elevation, or the notion thereof, was not sheer insanity on my own part, my doctors thought so – which was the same thing in effect; and I therefore took good care, when bewailing my hard fate, not to charge it, as I at first did, to the democratic wrath and jealousy of my tormentors.

CHAPTER VII.
IN WHICH SHEPPARD LEE IS CONVINCED THAT ALL IS NOT GOLD WHICH GLISTENS

This conversion of mine to their own opinion – or, if the reader will so have it, my return to rationality – had a favourable effect on my doctors. They removed (very circumspectly indeed) the strait jacket from my arms; and then, seeing I made no attempt to tear them to pieces, but was, on the contrary, very quiet and submissive, and that, instead of claiming to be Charlemagne the Second of France, I was content to be Mr. Arthur Megrim, of Virginia, they were so well satisfied of the cure they had effected, that they agreed to free me of their company, and so left me in the sole charge of Tibbikens and my affectionate sister.

In this manner I was cured of hypochondriasis; for although I felt, ever and anon, a strong propensity to confess myself a joint-stool, a Greek demigod, or some such other fanciful creature, I retained so lively a recollection of the penalties I had already paid for indulging in such vagaries, that I put a curb on my imagination, and resolved for the future to be nothing but plain Mr. Megrim, a gentleman with a disordered digestive apparatus.

I was cured of my hypochondriasis – I may say, also, of my dyspepsy – being kept by Tibbikens and my sister in such a starved condition, that it was impossible I should ever more complain of indigestion. But I was not yet cured of my melancholy; nothing but canvass-backs and terapins could cure that – and these, alas! were never more to bless my lips. Tibbikens had pronounced their fate, and with them, mine: thenceforth and for ever my diet was to be looked for in those – next to my digestive apparatus – chief favourites of my sister, bran bread and hickory ashes; my stomach, he solemnly assured me, would never be able to sustain any thing else.

I say, therefore, I was melancholy; and great reason had I to be so, condemned to live a life of ascetic denial, with the means in my hand to purchase all the luxuries in the world, and, which was worse, an eternal desire to enjoy them.

To banish this melancholy – alas! never to be banished – and perhaps to give me a little appetite for my bran bread and ashes, for which I never could contract a relish, the friendly Tibbikens again seduced me into the open air and my carriage, and carried me about to different places in which he thought I might find amusement. In this way he had conducted my prototype, the true Arthur Megrim, before me, whenever indolence and the luxuries of the table brought him too near to dyspepsy; and it was this uncommon kindness of the physician, in dragging the unfortunate gentleman to witness the galvanic experiments on the bodies of the executed felons, which had helped him so suddenly out of his own. Dr. Tibbikens was not, indeed, very choice whither he carried me, lugging me along with equal alacrity to a horse-race, a barbacue, or to the bedsides of his patients.

All his efforts, however, were vain. The memory of what I had suffered, with the anticipation of what I was yet to endure, with, doubtless, the addition of the ills for the time being, preyed upon my spirit. I followed him mechanically, and in a sort of torpor, incapable of enjoying myself, incapable almost of noting what passed before me. I was tired of the life of the young and affluent Mr. Megrim, and I should have been glad to exchange his body for some one's else: but, unluckily, my mind was so weighed down with indolence, melancholy, and stupefaction, that I really did not think of so natural a means of ending my troubles.

In this condition, greatly to the concern of my friendly physician, I remained until towards the end of March, when an incident happened which gave an impulse to my spirit greater than it had ever before experienced.