LETTER II.
Dear Charles,—Many years ago there lived in our
beautiful village a very respectable family called Dorson.
Its members were intelligent, and for the times well educated;
and their circle of acquaintance comprised the best
families. One thing, however, greatly marred their happiness.
The eldest child, a young lady of engaging manners,
affectionate heart, and pious spirit, became, on her approach
to maturity, a prey to a strange disease that baffled all skill
of the physician, and threatened to lay her in an early grave.
She received the information of her speedy death with
no alarm, and calmly prepared to obey the summons, which
at any moment, was likely to call her home. The family,
however, could not so easily consent to part with this beloved
daughter, and, hoping against hope, were prepared to deceive
themselves, and were also willing to be deceived with expectation
of cure from any strange, mysterious, or even supernatural
source. They were, indeed, honest; yet desire obscured
the perception of truth, and invested falsehood with its semblance.
Perhaps truth was secretly disliked, and that would
make even error pleasing: for we
do believe as we wish.
In this state of mind the affectionate family, consisting of
the parents and several brothers and sisters, were, a few days
after the sentence of the medical friend was pronounced, all
standing around the bed, and gazing with broken hearts on
the emaciated face of the dying girl, when suddenly the
window of the room, that opened into a piazza, was darkened
by the apparition of a strange man. He was apparently a
beggar, uncouth in his figure, and wrapped in a tattered and
filthy cloak; destitute of hat and shoes, his hair matted, and
his dirt-begrimed face illumined by two fierce and fiery
eyes.
Raising the sash, in a sharp voice he demanded,
“What is the matter with this girl?”
“She is dying!” replied the astonished friends.
“Dying! yes, so she is—but I can cure her,” replied
the mendicant; and at the same time passing to the door, he,
uninvited, entered the room.
The afflicted party, willing not only to catch at any straw
of hope, but even to create one, and imagining they discerned
something mysterious in the sudden appearance of this
squalid beggar, eagerly asked if he really could do what he
had said, and voluntarily offered to reward him liberally if
he would give life to the dying.
“Yes,” said the fellow, “I can cure her, and all I ask as
pay is—one quart of whisky.”
To be sure, Charles, this reward was asked long before
the temperance era, yet it must seem strange, to all having
little or no acquaintance with facts illustrative of our love of
deception where we wish to be deceived, that the Dorsons, a
family who in other circumstances would probably have instantly
turned such an insolent intruder into the street, did
not only allow him to try his jugglery, but agreed to pay his
price!
It was determined, however, to ask the permission of the
family physician, the friends not fearing that, as he had pronounced
the case hopeless, any objection on his part would
be urged.
Beyond measure amazed at the folly of the proposal, it
for the first suddenly occurred to his mind, that as so much
imagination belonged to the parents, possibly the disease of
the patient was imaginary: and as all had faith enough to
be healed in any way, he resolved to anticipate the beggar,
and save the family from the ridicule his preposterous attempt
might bring upon them. The physician, therefore,
assuming a mysterious air, and looking very intently on the
patient said, in a confident tone,
“Mary! I think I can cure you,—but the means are
strange,—will you make the trial?”
“Can you indeed cure her? doctor,” replied all.
“Yes—I think so—indeed I am confident; I now understand
the case—yes, I have the remedy.”
Well, Charles, the physician went to his office, and in
due time returned with the medicine. Standing by the bed,
and in the presence of the anxious friends, taking a small
box from his pocket, he thus addressed the patient:
“Mary! you are a religious young woman, and happily
in possession of a Christian's hope; death to you, therefore,
as we all believe, can only be gain. Indeed, I well know
you are not afraid to die, and that for some time you have
even been desirous to go to your Heavenly Father. Now,
Mary, I have in this box three pills, and you must take them
exactly as I prescribe, and the effects will follow precisely
as I tell you. In all human probability, after you have
taken the pills, you will be cured,—but if not, you will instantly
die. If you do not take the pills at all, you will die,
but perhaps not quite so soon—what do you say? Are you
ready for the trial?”
A deep and solemn silence now reigned in the chamber,
broken by an occasional sob of some anguished heart, in
that group of agitated friends; in the midst of which Mary
calmly and faintly replied to the physician's proposal, “I am
ready!”
“Well then,” replied the physician, “take this smallest
pill and swallow it; if you are to live you will, in about half
an hour, feel as if the pain in your hip was falling down your
thigh: then, quick as possible swallow the largest pill. But
if the pain after the first pill does not go down, you need not
take the second one. If you take, however, the second after
the favorable symptom of the first, you will pretty soon find
the pain going still lower towards your knee—and that very
instant swallow the middle-sized pill, when the pain will
seem to shoot from your foot like a bullet, and then—you are
cured!”
The doctor now took his leave, as other patients awaited
his attendance, promising, however, to return in a few hours,
when he confidently expected, as he said, to see Mary restored
to health.
In two hours the physician returned, and was instantly
overwhelmed with bursts of gratitude and wondering exclamations
by the whole family, who fairly carried him into the
girl's chamber; and there, sure enough, she sat smiling and
talking, and eager to give her beloved physician a minute
account of her almost miraculous cure.
“Yes, doctor,” said she, “it was just as you predicted;
after the first pill, in less than half an hour I distinctly perceived
something moving about an inch downward, as if the
hip bone were sinking; but directly after the second pill, it
fell away below my knee—and then when I quickly swallowed
the third pill, the whole went right out of my toe, and
I felt I was cured!”
And, Charles, she staid cured, and that for many years;
and this miracle, far surpassing any mesmeric or even popish
miracle, was owing to the most potent energy of—three
wheat bread pills!
