horrid names to match.     

       —It is n't a complaint,—I mean they are not a complaint,—they are two small organs, as I said, inside of you, and nobody knows what is the use of them. The most curious thing is that when anything is the matter with them you turn of the color of bronze. After all, I didn't mean to say I believed it was Morbus Addisonii; I only thought of that when I saw the discoloration.     

       So he gave me a recipe, which I took care to put where it could do no hurt to anybody, and I paid him his fee (which he took with the air of a man in the receipt of a great income) and said Good-morning.     

       —What in the name of a thousand diablos is the reason these confounded doctors will mention their guesses about “a case,” as they call it, and all its conceivable possibilities, out loud before their patients? I don't suppose there is anything in all this nonsense about “Addison's Disease,” but I wish he hadn't spoken of that very interesting ailment, and I should feel a little easier if that discoloration would leave my forehead. I will ask the Landlady about it,—these old women often know more than the young doctors just come home with long names for everything they don't know how to cure. But the name of this complaint sets me thinking. Bronzed skin! What an odd idea! Wonder if it spreads all over one. That would be picturesque and pleasant, now, wouldn't it? To be made a living statue of,—nothing to do but strike an attitude. Arm up—so—like the one in the Garden. John of Bologna's Mercury—thus on one foot. Needy knife-grinder in the Tribune at Florence. No, not       “needy,” come to think of it. Marcus Aurelius on horseback. Query. Are horses subject to the Morbus Addisonii? Advertise for a bronzed living horse—Lyceum invitations and engagements—bronze versus brass.—What       's the use in being frightened? Bet it was a bump. Pretty certain I bumped my forehead against something. Never heard of a bronzed man before. Have seen white men, black men, red men, yellow men, two or three blue men, stained with doctor's stuff; some green ones, from the country; but never a bronzed man. Poh, poh! Sure it was a bump. Ask Landlady to look at it.     

       —Landlady did look at it. Said it was a bump, and no mistake. Recommended a piece of brown paper dipped in vinegar. Made the house smell as if it were in quarantine for the plague from Smyrna, but discoloration soon 

 Prev. P 52/251 next