University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.
SAD HEART AND SILLY HEAD.

EVERY day for a week I resolved that on the morrow
I would leave Seacliff. But the morrow, that is,
the morrow of action, is a timid, forbearing circumstance,
extremely unwilling to force itself upon humanity,
and rarely coming to those who do not seek it. It is not thus
with the morrows of suffering; if it were, how often would
the sun stand still on Gibeon!

In the mean time I kept up my habit of calling daily on
the Westervelts, telling myself that I ought not certainly to
break off the intercourse while staying in the neighborhood,
for fear of occasioning painful explanations or impertinent
gossip. It is a charming circumstance in human nature that
a man can always find reasons for doing what he wishes to do.

I tried to talk with Miss Westervelt as with an indifferent
person; but I found that to me that form and face could
nevermore be indifferent; and since our conversations must
no longer be free and sympathetic, they became drearily cold
and embarrassed. Neither might demand, neither might
utter a word such as could melt away the long fields of ice
which had drifted between us. How often does it happen
that two hearts, which would gladly approach and befriend
each other, are separated, like Arctic discoverers, by frozen
wastes, across which they can see but indistinctly, and pass
never! One thing made me feel, not only unhappy, but

wicked. Somerville now talked a great deal to Miss Westervelt,
in his most insinuating manner, and she received him,
as it seemed to my jealousy, with something of that friendly
familiarity which had once been accorded to me. Perhaps
it is to punish my coldness, I thought, when I was most
charitable and hopeful; but at other times I raved silently
about the levity of the sex, and the easy admiration which it
grants to rakes. I would not admit, indeed, that Miss Westervelt
had become in any manner the victim of Somerville;—
I only said to myself that she was one with him in the bonds
of some inexplicable mystery, and therefore must always be
divided from me.

Wretched amid the society around me, yet incapable of
leaving it, I tried to revive my literary ambition, and planned
a new book. Previous to my arrival at Seacliff, and while
Miss Westervelt was no more to me, or not much more, than
any other handsome girl, successful authorship had seemed
to me the most precious reward offered to human exertion.
There was one wish which had gone up from me oftener than
any other; oftener than a desire for health, beauty, riches,
or any of those things that men usually covet. It comes to
me still at times, vestured with superhuman attractions, and
dowered with impossible glories. It is the longing to be full
young once more, and yet possess all the power and energy
of maturity. If that dream could be granted me, then would
I waste no time in pleasure, none in idleness, none, as now,
in despair, but, gathering all my intellectual and emotional
nature into one effort, I would produce a work in literature
that should make me famous at once, before another year
signed me, and while I still barely stood on the threshold of
manhood. To be distinguished young is a godlike lot which
falls to few, and may well be envied, if only for its rarity;
to be courted, admired, adored young, is a bribe glorious
enough to pay for an early death. I confess that this resultless
longing of mine, this cheating instinct of hope, has often
risen to a passion of wayward desire, which, before any great

moral tribunal, would condemn me terribly. What should a
Christian preacher say of a man who would rather be Byron
the young than “such an one as Paul the aged?” And yet,
I have been that man. Sometimes it has seemed to me that
the only completely successful being on earth is a belle of
eighteen; a creature still possessing store of beauty and youth
and hope, whose social triumph is already perfected; the
past darkened to her by few sorrows, few disappointments
and no remorse; the present a throne on which she sits
superbly, surrounded by her captives; the future a fairy land,
from which Time has not yet stripped one rich illusion.
Rarely are we men so fortunate; seldom does our tree of life
bear fruits and flowers commingled; our heads have begun
to whiten long before the world advances to crown them. I
think that men can feel much more deeply than women the
broad wisdom and the blessed sympathy which breathes from
that phrase of Hawthorne's, “The tranquil gloom of a disappointed
soul!”

I made the skeleton of a novel in a single morning. It
was a skeleton, indeed; a thing to frighten women and
children; one of the ghastliest, wofullest dramas conceivable.
The first three chapters were finished with a rapidity and
ease which would have done credit to Alexander Dumas &
Co., or to those inexhaustible human fountains whose romances
stream through the New York Ledger. I had a powerful
incentive to write, aside from artistic sentiment and the desire
of distinction. The Westervelts had despised me and cast
me off, I said; and I was determined to make them respect
me and regret me. On the fourth day, full of love, hatred,
revenge, and ambition, I plunged into the fourth chapter with
such spirit that I got over my head in less than an hour, and
had to stop for another inspiration. A day passed, and then
another, and there I was still, and there I am. I could not,
by any ingenuity or perseverance, breathe the breath of life
into that infamous skeleton so as to make it advance a single
step further. It was a painful termination to literary effort,

certainly, and yet, I beg that the world will not waste too
much pity upon me. It was only “one more unfortunate.”
The multitude of novels which have died in different stages
of their manuscript existence, is, perhaps, not easily conceivable
to the unromancing soul.

Rising one morning from that endless fourth chapter, I
walked up to Seacliff, to repose my mind with a little cheerful
conversation, as I cheatingly told myself. I found Bob Van
Leer, the picture of moody ennui, swinging on the garden
gate, which cracked and creaked despairingly under his ponderous
carnality. At sight of me he put foot to earth again,
yawned, stretched, and fell back against a post with his
hands in his pockets.

“Hullo, Fitz Hugh! Glad to see you. It's a confounded
dull morning. I've smoked, and I've whittled, and I've
whistled, and finally I've swung on a gate, just as I used to
when I was a boy.”

“Why don't you talk to the ladies,—or rather to your
lady?” said I. “Shame on you! a man who is courting and
as good as engaged, and yet finds his time a burden!”

“It an't that, Fitz Hugh. I do talk to her all I can. But
then Somerville comes in, and has a way of shoving a feller
aside so. Blast him! I wish sometimes he'd clear out, for
good. He's a right nice amusing feller in his place; but I
don't want him to be playing his hook about my shark, you
see.”

It was certainly a harsh figure of speech to call Miss Westervelt
a shark; but the comparison was Bob's poetical best,
and I did not worry him by laughing at it.

“I should say it was high time for you to be jealous,” I
remarked. “Somerville is a fascinating man;—that is, in
the opinion of some people.”

A spark of comprehension kindled in his opaque brain,
and flashed out through his eyes a look of alarm.

“What's that, Fitz Hugh? You don't mean to say he's
courting her! Oh, Lord! she wouldn't have him; would
she, Fitz Hugh?”

“Who knows? Women and weather are very uncertain.”

“Oh, no! she wouldn't think of such a thing, old feller.
She an't that sort of a girl, to run after a gay chap because
he can talk French and soft sodder. Why, he hasn't any
tin, I tell you, and couldn't support her a week. I know
all about Somerville. His father cut him off ten years ago.
He's awfully in debt, and borrows of everybody. I'll tell
you, as a secret, that I've lent him three or four hundred
dollars myself this summer. I don't expect to see it again,
and I didn't when I handed it over; but if I find out that
he's really courting her, I'll be hanged if I don't dun him
right before the whole of them. But he wouldn't be such a
confounded scoundrel as to spend my money and cut me out,
too!—eh, would he?”

“Better men have done worse things, under temptation.
Besides, he might repay you with her money, and so settle
that account honorably.”

“You don't say so, Fitz Hugh!” replied Bob, more and
more uneasy. “Come, let's go into the parlor. He's there
now, talking to her. I say, I ought to keep an eye on them,
don't you think so. Oh, thunder and lightning! I thought I
was all safe, and now—why, the old man has had another
talk with me, and told me it was all right, and I might go in
and win;—those wan't his words, you know, but that's the
sense of them;—and now to think that this beggar, who
hasn't a solitary red, should want to put in and spoil my
sport,—oh, by Jove, it's too confounded bad!”

The last half dozen words were spoken in a whisper, as
our shadows strode before us into the parlor. No one was
in the room but Miss Westervelt and Somerville, engaged in
an earnest conversation, apparently, but not sitting on the
same sofa, as, with the absurd suspiciousness of a jealous
man, I had feared that I should find them. She met my
gaze so innocently, she made my own name sound so sweet to
me by her utterance of it, she seemed to invite me with such
a gentleness, beyond words, to demand her friendship once

more, that for a moment I had the desire to bend soul and
knee to her. I could not talk, however, beyond repeating
her “good-morning,” and stammering some purposeless remark
concerning no matter what, perhaps the weather. There
were thoughts in me which would not let themselves be spoken,
nor anything else that was worth speaking. One of those
awkward pauses ensued which often occur when a tête-a-tête
has been broken up by an intrusion; and in the midst of it
I turned abruptly away to a centre-table, and commenced
thumbing a portfolio of photographs. When I glanced at
Miss Westervelt again her face was a little flushed, and she
was bending close over her sewing. Bob stood bolt upright
in the middle of the room, his hands thrust sternly into his
breeches pockets, and his eyes fixed on Somerville's impassible
face, with a ludicrous air of trying to discern the secret
purposes which revolved within, as far away from the poor
observer's ken, and as undecipherable by him, as the motions
of the unknown stars.

“You will find the photographs worth your inspection, Mr.
Fitz Hugh; especially if you have read (as I suppose you
have) the Stones of Venice,” observed Somerville.

I bowed to him, but I had neither words nor wish to reply.
It was now several days since I had become distant and taciturn
toward this man, hating him more and more bitterly
every hour, although as yet no hour had come when I could
decently express my bitterness. Robert soon gave over his
physiognomical observations, completely dazed by that polished
marble countenance and demeanor. Drawing a sigh
and a chair, he seated himself by me, put his elbows on the
table, put his face in his hands, and stared at the Venetian
palaces, bottom upward, with an air of implacable aversion.
From time to time he raised his eyes, as stealthily as such
big slow optics could rise, to get another look at his lady-love
and her companion. As for me, I would not play the spy,
and so sat with my back magnanimously turned; but I could
not avoid overhearing nearly every word of their conversation.

“Apropos of Venice,—Shakspeare!” observed Somerville.
“I believe that you adore Shakspeare.”

“It is not womanly, perhaps,” she said; “but I do.”

“Not womanly! But henceforward it is womanly,” he
replied in a tone so flattering, that it seemed to make Miss
Westervelt at once the great exemplar and leader of her sex.
“Indeed, women, gifted as they are with a high degree of
artistic sensibility, ought to be the first in discovering real
genius and the most devout in worshipping it. I suppose it
is their charity alone which makes them encourage so many
little authors.”

Here I felt myself hit, and rustled the photographs very
gently.

“I do positively believe,” he continued, “that we should
be far better off if we could get rid of the numberless insignificant
books which now dissipate our time and brains, and
confine ourselves to the study of some few master minds. I
should like to select for the world's reading, Homer, Plato,
Dante, Bacon, Shakspeare, and Milton; and first, before
these even, I would of course place the Bible.”

I could hardly help laughing outright and angrily to hear
him name the Bible among his literary favorites.

“Oh! I beg pardon; I came near committing a great injustice.
I absolutely forgot for a moment that Mr. Fitz Hugh
was in print,” he added in such a very pleasant tone that the
words really did not sound much like irony. “Allow me to
subjoin the Idler in Italy to my list of master pieces. Mr.
Fitz Hugh, am I to have your thanks?”

“Grateful of course for being put once and forever alongside
of Shakspeare and the rest of them,” said I, over my
shoulder. “But I decidedly disapprove your plan of exterminating
the little authors. It would be just as reasonable
to destroy all the machinery in the world except the steam-engine,
the hydraulic ram, and one or two other apparatus
of immense power. Suppose a gentleman had a couple of
hydraulic-rams in his dining-room,—I think he would still

miss his nut-crackers. Besides, how many minds have just
calibre enough to take in a small author or two, and no
more. Depend upon it, that the masses would not learn to
read, if all reading were forbidden except works of the highest
genius.”

“That's so,” confirmed Bob. “If I couldn't get hold of
anything more interesting than old Milton and Shakspeare,
I wouldn't read a page, year in and year out.”

“Ah, Robert! for your sake I would spare the Pirate's
Own Book,” smiled Somerville.

“I read as much as you do,” asseverated Bob, loudly and
angrily.

Up to this time the poor fellow had always bowed his head
meekly before Somerville's bland irony, and had seemed anxious
to improve by it in some blundering fashion, rather than
to justify himself or to retort bitterly. It was jealousy which
soured him now, and made him seek occasion of quarrel.

“Bah! ne nous fachons pas. My opinions are not worth
a discussion,” observed Somerville tranquilly, and without
even a stare of surprise at this revolt of one of his subjects.

“Oh! you get off by talking French,” muttered Bob,
smothering his indignation, and turning to the photographs
with an asphyxiated countenance. For the moment he was,
I suspect, angry even with Miss Westervelt, because she had
heard him satirized without rushing to his rescue.

“I say, Fitz Hugh,” he growled, “I wish we was in Venice
together. I'd just buy one of these palaces and have a gondola,
and stay there all my life. I'm dead tired of America,—
hanged if I an't!”

He glanced at Mary, as if to see how she bore the implied
threat, and, discovering probably, no conspicuous alarm in
her face, rose sullenly from the table and stalked out of
the house. I followed as if to speak to him, but he had vanished,
and so I stood in the hall, hesitating.

“Robert is horribly jealous of me,” I heard Somerville
say.

She made no answer in words, but she must have made
one in look. Was the glance kindly, or reproving? I would
have given all the worlds I possessed to know.

“And so is our other friend, the littérateur,” he added.

“Hush!”

“They might well be, if they knew my thoughts.” (No
answer.) “No occasion for it, I fear, if they know yours.”

“Nobody knows my thoughts,” she said. “I have no
thoughts on such subjects.”

“So much the worse for me! But, really, what you say
there is quite cruel. You have no thoughts on such subjects?
You never think how to make men happy? I declare
that no woman has a right to bury her talent for causing happiness.
Be it beauty, or intelligence, or a noble heart, or all
those things together, she is morally bound to use it.”

I started to find that I was eavesdropping, and escaped out
of doors noiselessly. This is a specimen of the visits that I
now made in that house which had once, and not long ago,
been to me the House Beautiful. I entered it gloomy, and left
it miserable, without a single tatter of happiness, or even of
hope, to wrap around my poverty-stricken spirit. Somerville
had but to sit down by Miss Westervelt, to pay her a few
compliments, to address her in a low tone, and in a moment
or two I fled away, as easily, naturally, and to all appearance,
as unobservedly, as any random mote of dust might
drift out of a window. I wish the reader to conceive clearly
how forlorn I was when I quitted Seacliff this morning, how
chafed and hopeless, how full of romance, fictitious and real,
in order that he may judge with some leniency the part which
I played in another scene immediately after.

From the edge of the bluff I discovered Mrs. Van Leer
on the beach below, conchologizing with the usual ostentation
of spotless hosiery. She was strolling westward along the
shore, and by the time I overtook her was within twenty rods
of the lonely wooded point which I have mentioned as The
Cedars.

“Ah!” said she, affecting to start. “How slyly you come
upon people! One would think you had bad intentions.”

“The worst in the world,” I replied, “My object is to flirt
with a married lady.”

“Oh! what a hor—rible idea!” she laughed. “Do let me
dis—suade you. But first who is the poor doomed creature?
Is it Mrs. Treat?”

“Fairer game than that. But never mind now who
she is. I will tell you by and by, when we get to the
Cedars.”

“Oh, but I am not going to the Cedars. That would
nev—er do. Do you suppose that I would trust myself
to the fascinations of such a woman—killer as you?”

Talking, picking up shells, skipping pebbles along the still
water, we strolled onward, and in about ten minutes reached
the bare sandy neck of the point. There was a moment's
halt on the miniature ridge, to look at the long curves of
beach running either way, to jest, to laugh, to simper; and
then, with a hypocritical air of unconsciousness, as if we did
not know that we were advancing, we loitered down the hillock
to a lonelier strand. The Treat house and Seacliff were
both hidden now, and not a dwelling was visible along the
western coast nearer than half a mile. To the left of us a
faintly-marked footpath edged the shore of the point, diverging
after a space into the thickest of the underwood, and
coming out, as I knew, upon a small plateau, half bare rock
and half meagre turf, which formed the southern close of the
lilliputian promontory.

“What a beau—tiful site for a summer-house the Cedars
would be!” said Mrs. Van Leer, at gaze. “I sometimes
think it would be prettier even than Seacliff. I have talked
to Henry about setting up a cot—tage on it.”

“Suppose we go and pick out a building spot,” I suggested.

Without another word, we walked down the path and
entered the close grove of stunted, rusty wind-twisted evergreens.

The low, stiff, horizontal branches projected across
the narrow footway at every yard, and I frequently had to
draw them aside to give passage to Mrs. Van Leer's voluminous
drapery, which caught and tangled and tore in a fretting
manner. We had both become distressingly silent, but
glanced, every other moment, at each other's faces. Once
or twice, when I caught her eyes returning over and over
again to mine in the course of a few seconds, she laughed
gayly, but with a tremulous twitter of embarrassment, while
a red spot gradually deepened in the centre of her cheek.
Silent still, silent as burglars stealing through midnight, we
reached the plateau and entered a rocky lap or indentation
in its extreme edge. Seacliff was invisible, and every other
house; so was the long line of beach even, except a low cape
far to the eastward; nothing earthly faced us but the ripples
of the Sound, vessels passing miles away, and, beyond them,
the yellow shore of Long Island. Mrs. Van Leer's face was
quite flushed, and her hand trembled, as I aided her to descend
a smooth plate of granite into this sequestered hollow.
Then, instead of seating herself on a broad shelf of rock, or
lounging on a bank of dry turf, as I expected to see her do,
she took possession of a stone isolated from every other and
disposed her dress about her with nun-like modesty. Was
she getting frightened at the compromising position in which
she had deliberately placed herself? I guessed so, and felt
half indignant at the changeable creature, at once reckless
and skittish; for her air of guileful caution was so conspicuous
and so evidently put on against me, that it seemed an
imputation. Feeling a little insulted, I walked to a ledge of
rock some fifteen feet distant from her, seated myself, and fell
to staring at the white-winged coasters which were passing
each other eastward and westward. My reserve either reassured
her or piqued her, for she presently commenced conversation.

“Beau—tiful! Don't you think it is a pretty site for a
house. Mr. Fitz Hugh?”

“Yes; but it is prettier without a house. It would be a pity
to spoil such a picturesque lounging-place by crowding it with
walls, fences, and garden-walks. If I owned Seacliff, I would
buy this point and keep it just as it is. It is a spot to visit,
and not to live in.”

“I think so too,” she replied; and then followed another
silence.

I stood looking out to sea, vacant of purpose, irresolute,
tossing, drifting, like the wavelets which flowed and beat each
other, and broke and rose again in random unrest before my
eyes. Suddenly, I do not know whence, a wind of ridicule
blew upon me, giving my thoughts a new impulse and setting
them, full sea, toward a shore of jest and laughter. It would
be a wonderful joke, it seemed to me in that absurd instant,
to scare this silly woman. It would set her down and serve
her right and teach her better.

“But,—Mrs. Van Leer,” I said, rising and walking deliberately
up to her, “I promised to tell you what lady I meant
to flirt with.”

She laughed faintly and gave me a quick nervous glance
of apprehension, but did not speak.

“Of course,” I went on, “it must be somebody whom I can
sit near and talk to in whispers.”

As I said this, I bent over her, and, taking her hand, held
it firmly, notwithstanding a weak effort which she made to
withdraw it. It was the only time in my life that I had ever
addressed a woman so insolently; and I was astonished to see
how this poor trifler quailed before my audacity; how terrified
she was, and yet how helplessly fascinated.

“Oh! don't, Mr. Fitz Hugh!” she gasped, rising hastily,
but not retreating. “I beg of you! I was only jesting. Oh!
I ought not to have come here. Oh! please let us go back.”

There was no menace in her manner, no defiance, no resistance
even; nothing but an air of supplication, as if I had
a right to command and be obeyed. Thank Heaven! I had
at least enough manliness in me to be ashamed of my coarse

jest the moment I saw her alarm; and it was partly to reassure
her that I burst into a laugh as I dropped her hand
and stepped a pace backwards.

“What are you laughing at?” she said, taking courage a
little. “Oh, but why did you speak to me that way? Let
us go back, Mr. Fitz Hugh, if you please.”

“I didn't know that you were such a coward,” I replied,
with a feeling more akin to contempt than repentance. She
was like those feeble spirits, I thought, whom Dante saw just
within the gate of the Inferno, who were neither good nor
evil, and of whom his guide said scornfully, Let us speak no
more of them, but look and pass on. “You are as timid as
a baby crying because it is spoken to by a stranger,” I continued.
“Well, let us go back, then. You don't care to hear
about the flirtation?”

“Not here. It isn't a proper place to talk about such
things,” she said with a simplicity which made me smile in
her face. “And you know it, too,” she added, picking up her
dignity a little. “Let me give you one piece of ad—vice, Mr.
Fitz Hugh. I have seen more of society than you have, by
a year or two; and I know what I am talking about. If
people want to flirt, they should do it at a party or a ball.
That is the proper place for it, sir.”

The theory was so characteristic of her, so novel, so ludicrous,
that I could not possibly help another burst of laughter.
She seemed quite annoyed, as well as a trifle puzzled, at my
amusement, and walked off sulkily, refusing to speak except
to fret at the cedar branches for catching in her berage dress.
So after a while I apologized for laughing; then I thanked
her solemnly for her advice; and the silly creature was
satisfied.

When I was a boy, I used to amuse myself with running
down a pet bantam rooster, coddling him a little, and letting
him escape. While I was after him, he cackled with terror;
while I held him under my arm, he was as quiet and pettable
as a dog; but the moment I dropped him on his legs, he ran

off to a safe distance and crowed defiantly and triumphantly.
Just so behaved the sprightly bantam lady whom I now gallanted
from the spot where I had scared her. The moment
that she got out of the woods, she cackled lustily over my
naughtiness and its utter discomfiture, flinging bravados,—
pæans,—of lively scorn at me because I had “wanted to be
so saucy, but dared not.”

“Aha!” said she, “I know how to manage you fast gentlemen.
I have had some expe—rience with just such high
young fellows as you are. You thought you could throw dust
in my eyes; but you caught it back again hot and heavy.”

“Yes, yes; I allow it; I don't deny it,” returned I, trying
to give as much politeness as possible to the smile which I
could not repress. “I concede and testify that I have behaved
like a fast man and been treated like a slow one.”

“Aha! aha! yes, indeed!” she chuckled. “And that's the
way you'll always find yourself treated when you try your
impudence on me.”

“Impudence! Mrs. Van Leer!!” I remonstrated, with a
heart-broken look. “Well, if it has come to that,—if you can
charge me seriously with that,—I may as well leave Seacliff
at once.”

“No, no, Mr. Fitz Hugh!” she replied hastily. “Don't
be annoyed; don't be angry, now. Come, you didn't take me
se—riously, did you? I really didn't mean to hurt your feelings.
I meant fast, you know; and I don't blame a gentleman
for being fast occa—sionally, provided he doesn't carry it too
far.”

On the whole, my impertinence had evidently been quite a
treat to her, and she liked me all the better for having given
her such a delightful five minutes of excitement. Women
dote on emotions, because these appeal to the larger and more
vigorous part of their nature; and consequently they are partial
to such events, and such men too, as produce in them
throbs and blushes and tremors. Why is it that so many
women are always to be found at a public execution? Not

because the mere raw spectacle of violent death is pleasing
to them; but because the thrill which it gives to the nerves
is at once a fascination and a luxury.

When I parted from her at the gate of the Seacliff grounds,
she shook hands, and protested, with a ludicrous air of forgiving
innocence, that she was not angry with me. As for
me, ashamed of my conduct, remorseful for it and resolved
not to repeat it, why was it that I flirted with her the next
day and the day after, and so on for days together? Well,
there were various reasons for the folly, although no excuses.
In the first place I felt a vindictive satisfaction in it because
it seemed to avenge in some stupid, animal way, the wrongs
which my heart had suffered, and was suffering, from another
quarter. In the second place I had introduced Mrs. Van
Leer into my novel; had recreated her into a woman of
problematical virtue, but fascinating manners; and had ended
by making the thought of her attractive to my fevered imagination.
Thus, from writing a bad romance, I fell to acting
a bad reality, which is certainly somewhat more contemptible.
Very often, indeed, I had a desire to tell the lady that she
was one fool and I another; but as the things that I really
said were quite contrary to those assertions, we grew daily
more intimate and ridiculous. Did ever any sane person but
me suspect himself of being an idiot? That humiliating supposition
often assaulted me in my latter teens, when I first
began to feel awkward in the presence of women; and now
it pointed its mocking finger at me again as I grimaced and
chattered at the feet of Mrs. Van Leer. Why in the name
of common sense should I not charge myself with cretinism?
I was neglected (I thought) by the Westervelts, courted by
the leaden Bob and feather-brained Cousin Jule, and knew
that I hourly uttered things which deserved to bring me either
to a whipping-post or to a shaved head and mustard-plasters.