Of Later Days They Say He Worked In The Town A Good Deal,
And Did Not Look So Well Or So Happy As On The Farm.
In this cottage
opposite the violet bank they had small-pox once, the only case I
recollect in the
Hamlet - the old men used to say everybody had it when
they were young; this was the only case in my time, and they recovered
quickly without any loss, nor did the disease spread. A roomy well-built
cottage like that, on dry ground, isolated, is the only hospital worthy
of the name. People have a chance to get well in such places; they have
very great difficulty in the huge buildings that are put up expressly for
them. I have a Convalescent Home in my mind at the moment, a vast
building. In these great blocks what they call ventilation is a steady
draught, and there is no 'home' about it. It is all walls and regulations
and draughts, and altogether miserable. I would infinitely rather see any
friend of mine in John Brown's cottage. That terrible disease, however,
seemed to quite spoil the violet bank opposite, and I never picked one
there afterwards. There is something in disease so destructive, as it
were, to flowers.
The hundreds of times I saw the tall chimney of that cottage rise out of
the hill-side as I came home at all hours of the day and night! the first
chimney after a long journey, always comfortable to see, especially so in
earlier days, when we had a kind of halting belief in John Brown's
ghosts, several of which were dotted along that road according to him.
The ghosts die as we grow older, they die and their places are taken by
real ghosts.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 373 of 394
Words from 99901 to 100198
of 105669
