Cfje #artien Boctor 



THE NEURASTHENIC VICTIM HAS ALREADY COME UNDER 

 THE SUBTLE INFLUENCE OF THE BENIGN HEALER 



Editors Note: The author of these "confessions" is now well-known as an amateur 



gardener, and writes with such genuine humor as proves the efficacy of the "cure". 



Who she is we do not say at this lime, but llie future may reveal it. 



I DOUBT if ever a new- winged butter- 

 fly drying moist, uncertain, exquisite 

 wings in their first sunshine, felt more 

 astonishment at a new-found world 

 than I, or found it stranger or more be- 

 wildering to look back to the old life in 

 the chrysalis. The mere being alive is so 

 wonderful a thing. 



I had been ill, you must know, for a long, 

 long time, two or three years, it was. 

 Not dangerously ill — that might have 

 been exciting — but sunk in that spiritual 

 and bodily quagmire, the "Slough of Des- 

 pond" we used to call "nervous prostra- 

 tion"; now, it is known by a dozen imposing 

 names — psychasthenia, neurasthenia, 

 hypochondria, and the rest, according, I 

 suppose as to whether the quagmire has 

 really gripped you, or whether you're 

 sitting down on the edge of it and won't 

 try to get up. There are dozens of ways 

 of reaching it: too much work will bring 

 you there, or too little; too much pleasure 

 or none at all. My road was overwork, or 

 rather, an idiotic idea of work which al- 

 lowed no space for play — the result, I 

 suppose of owning a New England Con- 

 science. To my mind, that diseased and 

 enlarged type of conscience, known as New 

 England, is responsible for more ills of the 

 body and mind than any other one thing. 



It insures you a colorless, monotonous 

 existence close-packed with useful work, 

 from which any touch of the joy of life is 

 carefully excluded. That was what mine 

 did for me. And then it leaves you - — 

 as mine left me — at eight and twenty 

 with the best days of life gone by — noth- 

 ing much done — nothing ahead, but the 

 prospect of being a burden to long-suffering 

 relatives, and for company the conviction 

 of having been a fool. 



After a while it was not so bad. Life 

 hadn't been so wildly exciting that I felt 

 I was missing much. There were books. 

 There are foolish and satisfactory ways of 

 amusing yourself in your head — as fool- 

 ish and satisfactory as the game of tit-tat- 

 toe to one's infancy. Then there are 

 symptoms. There's your heart and your 

 stomach and your head, whether you slept 

 or didn't — these are of engrossing interest 

 to yourself, though they pall sometimes on 

 your family. As for what happens outside 

 — you don't care at all, no more than a 

 clam cares about mountain scenery. All 

 you want is to be let alone. 



I should have been there yet, in the quag- 

 mire, if it hadn't been for the new nurse. 

 My chance came with her. 



It had been rather a relief when Miss 

 Watkins went. She was a good enough 

 nurse, I suppose, as nurses go, but her nose 

 worried me — it was too thick at the end ; 

 she had lips that closed tightly when she 

 didn't talk, but she talked most of the 

 time. She used to tell me all she could 

 think of about the hospital — how they 

 "laid out" people, and matters of like 

 interest with vivid and abundant detail. 

 She wouldn't let me alone. She kept 

 digging into my sandbank — metaphori- 

 cally of course, but it worried me. 



The new nurse was different. I liked 

 her from the first. She was tall and strong 

 and dark and she had a very quiet face. 

 Her profile was beautiful; I think she didn't 

 know that. She had a chin like Rossetti's 

 Blessed Damozel, but there the resemblance 

 stopped for the nurse wore eye-glasses and 

 the dark hair that ought to have been 

 parted and worn in a knot at the back of 

 her neck was put up in a pompadour and 

 her little white nurse's cap was frilled, which 

 suited her no better than it would have 

 suited the Rossetti lady. But these were 

 matters that might be mended. "Miss 

 Clarke" she w r as; I called her "Clarky". 



It was about three weeks after Clarky 

 came to me that I began to sit up. A 

 nuisance, but the doctor insisted. So for 

 a half-hour a day I was put in the big 

 chair by the window, tucked in with pillows 

 and rugs and I had the tedious pleasure of 

 looking at the blank February sky above 

 and the blank expressionless yards below. 

 That from the window of our "third-story- 

 back" constituted our prospect. Back to 

 back, were the yards, a double-row of 

 brown-wooden compartments, all precisely 

 the same, and for all the world like the 

 pasteboard compartment-box that a gro- 

 cer fills with eggs. Only these were empty. 



"Who's the round old gentleman in the 

 next yard?" asked Clarky one day. 



I leaned toward the window. She had 

 just given me my nourishment, some sort 

 of eggy stuff, and stood by the other win- 

 dow waiting until I had finished. 



"That's the Kreislers's yard," I said, "it 

 must be their 'Uncle Hermann.'" Clarky 

 took the glass and the little plate and went 

 out, leaving me looking down at "Uncle 

 Hermann." A round, fat, little man, he 

 was and he seemed fussing with a brown 

 mass of vines on the fence. I watched him 

 absently, just as I watched the Thompson's 

 cat walk carefully along the fence-top, 

 deftly eluding the cat-teasers and going 

 where she would. Uncle Hermann still 



11 



kept poking at the fence; presently, I 

 noticed that branches were beginning to 

 form a pile on the bare grass-plot be- 

 side him. Then, as I watched, the fence 

 emerged from the brown mass at one side 

 and against it, plainly in view, was a single 

 branch trained upward. 



"Clarky," I said, as I heard the door 

 opened, " give me the opera-glasses, please, 

 top drawer, chiffonier, right-hand side. I 

 want to see what Uncle Hermann is doing." 

 I focussed the glasses on the yard below. 

 Now I could see. He was clipping with 

 scissors and every now and then feeling 

 in a pocket for a bit of something that he 

 tacked to the fence with the hammer he 

 kept in the other pocket, while on the fence 

 was beginning to appear a design of 

 branches, springing from a single stem, 

 branching like the seven-golden-candlestick 

 I remember seeing in a Sunday School 

 quarterly of my youth. 



"What's he doing?" I asked. 



Clarky took the glasses, screwed them 

 a bit — she is near-sighted — watched at- 

 tentively a moment: 



"He's pruning his roses, Miss Caroline, 

 and he's pruning them in good old German 

 style. He's going to have a handsome 

 espalier arrangement on that fence." 



"Why does he prune them?" I asked. 



"They'll bloom better." 



"But why now? Nobody cuts his bushes 

 until May." 



Clarky smiled. "'Uncle Hermann' 

 knows what he's about. Now's the time 

 for roses. Later, the vines would bleed, 

 now the cuts will heal before the sap runs, 

 not a bit of vitality will be lost." 



" How did you know all that? " I asked, 

 when she had got me back into bed. 



Clarky laughed. "My mother was Eng- 

 lish," she said, "I used to help her prune 

 the roses when I was a little girl. I've 

 seen her do just exactly what 'Uncle 

 Hermann's' been doing." 



"Tell me about it." 



"About what?" She folded the rugs, 

 put the pillows back on the couch and 

 was moving about the room putting one 

 thing and another in its place. 



"You know — about pruning the roses. 

 Sit down in the big chair and tell me." 



She sat down in the big chair, took off 

 her eyeglasses, pushed back the dark hair, 

 looked out across the little yards and ever 

 so far beyond. 



"It was 'way up in Massachusetts that 

 we lived," she began, "up near the edge 

 of Vermont, but my mother was English 

 and she would have her roses. All up on 

 one side of the house they were, on a lattice 

 — Sweet Brier, Baltimore Belle, and the 

 Seven Sisters, were the climbing roses. 

 There was a tangle of old cinnamon roses 

 below the house; then we had a York 

 and Lancaster by the front door, and a 

 bed with Jacqueminots and Boursaults, 

 Maiden's Blush and a beautiful old 

 Damask. Moss roses we had, too. It would 

 be a day like this that my mother would 

 take — the first warm day, only it would 



