say that. The plague can’t come where this article is, my boy!”
“Plague? What plague?”
“What plague, indeed? Why the Asiatic plague that nearly depopulated
London a couple of centuries ago.”
“But how does that concern us? There is no plague here, I reckon.”
“Sh! I’ve let it out! Well, never mind–just keep it to yourself.
Perhaps I oughtn’t said anything, but its bound to come out sooner or
later, so what is the odds? Old McDowells wouldn’t like me to–to–
bother it all, I’ll jest tell the whole thing and let it go. You see,
I’ve been down to St. Louis, and I happened to run across old Dr.
McDowells–thinks the world of me, does the doctor. He’s a man that
keeps himself to himself, and well he may, for he knows that he’s got a
reputation that covers the whole earth–he won’t condescend to open
himself out to many people, but lord bless you, he and I are just like
brothers; he won’t let me go to a hotel when I’m in the city–says I’m
the only man that’s company to him, and I don’t know but there’s some
truth in it, too, because although I never like to glorify myself and
make a great to-do over what I am or what I can do or what I know,
I don’t mind saying here among friends that I am better read up in most
sciences, maybe, than the general run of professional men in these days.
Well, the other day he let me into a little secret, strictly on the
quiet, about this matter of the plague.
“You see it’s booming right along in our direction–follows the Gulf
Stream, you know, just as all those epidemics do, and within three months
it will be just waltzing through this land like a whirlwind! And whoever
it touches can make his will and contract for the funeral. Well you
can’t cure it, you know, but you can prevent it. How? Turnips! that’s
it! Turnips and water! Nothing like it in the world, old McDowells
says, just fill yourself up two or three times a day, and you can snap
your fingers at the plague. Sh!–keep mum, but just you confine yourself
to that diet and you’re all right. I wouldn’t have old McDowells know
that I told about it for anything–he never would speak to me again.
Take some more water, Washington–the more water you drink, the better.
Here, let me give you some more of the turnips. No, no, no, now, I
insist. There, now. Absorb those. They’re, mighty sustaining–brim
full of nutriment–all the medical books say so. Just eat from four to
seven good-sized turnips at a meal, and drink from a pint and a half to a
quart of water, and then just sit around a couple of hours and let them
ferment. You’ll feel like a fighting cock next day.”
Fifteen or twenty minutes later the Colonel’s tongue was still chattering
away–he had piled up several future fortunes out of several incipient
“operations” which he had blundered into within the past week, and was
now soaring along through some brilliant expectations born of late
promising experiments upon the lacking ingredient of the eye-water.
And at such a time Washington ought to have been a rapt and enthusiastic
listener, but he was not, for two matters disturbed his mind and
distracted his attention. One was, that he discovered, to his confusion
and shame, that in allowing himself to be helped a second time to the
turnips, he had robbed those hungry children. He had not needed the
dreadful “fruit,” and had not wanted it; and when he saw the pathetic
sorrow in their faces when they asked for more and there was no more to
give them, he hated himself for his stupidity and pitied the famishing
young things with all his heart. The other matter that disturbed him was
the dire inflation that had begun in his stomach. It grew and grew, it
became more and more insupportable. Evidently the turnips were
“fermenting.” He forced himself to sit still as long as he could, but
his anguish conquered him at last.
He rose in the midst of the Colonel’s talk and excused himself on the