He Would Take Bronchitis In The Dog-Days, And
Have Hay-Fever At Christmas.
After a six weeks' period of drought, he
would be stricken down with rheumatic fever; and he would go out in a
November fog and come home with a sunstroke.
They put him under laughing-gas one year, poor lad, and drew all his
teeth, and gave him a false set, because he suffered so terribly with
toothache; and then it turned to neuralgia and ear-ache. He was never
without a cold, except once for nine weeks while he had scarlet fever;
and he always had chilblains. During the great cholera scare of 1871,
our neighbourhood was singularly free from it. There was only one
reputed case in the whole parish: that case was young Stivvings.
He had to stop in bed when he was ill, and eat chicken and custards and
hot-house grapes; and he would lie there and sob, because they wouldn't
let him do Latin exercises, and took his German grammar away from him.
And we other boys, who would have sacrificed ten terms of our school-life
for the sake of being ill for a day, and had no desire whatever to give
our parents any excuse for being stuck-up about us, couldn't catch so
much as a stiff neck. We fooled about in draughts, and it did us good,
and freshened us up; and we took things to make us sick, and they made us
fat, and gave us an appetite.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 65 of 255
Words from 17251 to 17503
of 67598
