7. 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 bed-sides 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.
