Then Ernest sent his small stock of
goods to Debenham's, gave up the house he had taken two and a half
years previously, and returned to civilisation.
I had expected that he would now rapidly recover, and was
disappointed to see him get as I thought decidedly worse. Indeed,
before long I thought him looking so ill that I insisted on his
going with me to consult one of the most eminent doctors in London.
This gentleman said there was no acute disease but that my young
friend was suffering from nervous prostration, the result of long
and severe mental suffering, from which there was no remedy except
time, prosperity, and rest.
He said that Ernest must have broken down later on, but that he
might have gone on for some months yet. It was the suddenness of the
relief from tension which had knocked him over now.
"Cross him," said the doctor, "at once. Crossing is the great
medical discovery of the age. Shake him out of himself by shaking
something else into him."
I had not told him that money was no object to us, and I think he
had reckoned me up as not over rich. He continued:
"Seeing is a mode of touching, touching is a mode of feeding,
feeding is a mode of assimilation, assimilation is a mode of
re-creation and reproduction, and this is crossing- shaking yourself
into something else and something else into you.
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