60 IDLEHURST : 



coarse food to repletion every day. He can drink year 

 to year a river of drugs. He can smoke a compound 

 of fiery nastiness which might choke a whole street. 

 I sometimes wonder what might have been made of 

 such fibre, with decent care and some regard for that 

 branch of science which our little school-people learn 

 to worship, as per syllabus, under the name Ijeen. 



It may be that country doctors have found it 

 difficult to touch the mass of ignorant conceit, and 

 the traditional sanitation ; but I cannot altogether 

 hold them clear of neglecting the teaching side of 

 their office. Admirably assiduous and widely accom- 

 plished as they are in the main, they ought, by 

 this time, to have made more impression upon the 

 destructive heresies of cottage nurses, and to have 

 set up some standard of clean and sound living in 

 that qualified state of health which the cottager 

 desires. Our medical men, covering their large, 

 scattered practices, riding far in wild nights, working 

 hard for fees too often dubious, are in private sickness 

 beyond praise : is it too much to ask for a larger 

 recollection of public health ? 



As I came home, the evening thickened, dull and 

 still ; the time was one of those halting-places that 

 come in the advance of every Spring. The wood was 

 thick set with violets ; the red stemmed spurges were 



