The Atlantic Monthly | Page 8

being carried home, and of the consternation there, and
long delay in obtaining the surgeon. The pain of an operation brought
me fully to my senses; and when that was over, I was left alone to sleep,
or to think over my situation at leisure. I'm afraid I had but little of a
Christian spirit then. All my plans of labor and pleasure spoiled by this
one piece of carelessness! to call it by the mildest term. All those nice
little fancies that should have grown into real flesh-and-blood articles
for my publisher, hung up to dry and shrivel without shape or
comeliness! The garden, the dairy, the new bit of carriage-way through
the beeches,--my pet scheme,--the new music, the sewing, all laid upon
the shelf for an indefinite time, and I with no better employment than to
watch the wall-paper, and to wonder if it wasn't almost dinner- or
supper-time, or nearly daylight! To be sure, I knew and thought of all
the improving reflections of a sick-room; but it was much like a
mild-spoken person making peace among twenty quarrelsome ones.
You can see him making mouths, but you don't hear a word he says.
A sick mind breeds fever fast in a sick body, and by night I was in a
high fever, and for a day or two knew but little of what went on about
me. One of the first things I heard, when I grew easier, was, that my
neighbor, the sportsman, was waiting below to hear how I was. It was
the younger one whose gun had wounded me; and he had shown great
solicitude, they said, coming several times each day to inquire for me.
He brought some birds to be cooked for me, too,--and came again to
bring some lilies he had gone a mile to fetch, he told the girl. Every day
he came to inquire, or to bring some delicacy, or a few flowers, or a
new magazine for me, until the report of his visit came to be an
expected excitement, and varied the dull days wonderfully. Sickness
and seclusion are a new birth to our senses, oftentimes. Not only do we
get a real glimpse of ourselves, undecked and unclothed, but the
commonest habits of life, and the things that have helped to shape them
day by day, put on a sort of strangeness, and come to shake hands with
us again, and make us wonder that they should be just exactly what
they are. We get at the primitive meaning of them, as if we rubbed off
the nap of life, and looked to see how the threads were woven; and they
come and go before us with a sort of old newness that affects us much
as if we should meet our own ghost some time, and wonder if we are

really our own or some other person's housekeeper.
I went through all this, and came out with a stock of small facts
beside,--as, that the paper-hanger had patched the hangings in my
chamber very badly in certain dark spots, (I had got several headaches,
making it out,)--that the chimney was a little too much on one
side,--that certain boards in the entry-floor creaked of their own accord
in the night,--that Neighbor Brown had tucked a few new shingles into
the roof of his barn, so that it seemed to have broken out with
them,--and any number of other things equally important. At length I
got down-stairs, and was allowed to see a few friends. Of course there
was an inundation of them; and each one expected to hear my story,
and to tell a companion one, something like mine, only a little more so.
It was astonishing, the immense number of people that had been hurt
with guns. No wonder I was sick for a day or two afterward. I was more
prudent next time, however, and, as the gossips had got all they wanted,
I saw only my particular friends. Among these my neighbor, the
sportsman, insisted on being reckoned, and after a little hesitation we
were obliged to admit him. I say we,--for, on hearing of my injury, my
good cousin, Mary Mead, had come to nurse and amuse me. She was
one of those safe, serviceable, amiable people, made of just the stuff for
a satellite, and she proved invaluable to me. She was immensely taken
with Mr. Ames, too, (I speak of the younger, for, after the first call of
condolence, the elder sportsman never came,) and to her I left the task
of entertaining him, or rather of doing the honors of the house,--for the
gentleman contrived to entertain himself and us.
Now don't imagine the man a hero, for he was no such thing. He was
very good-looking,--some might