Pain is not malady; it is the revelation of malady???-the
meeting and recoil between the unknown death and the unknown life; that
jar of the system whereby the fact becomes known to the man that he is
ill. There was disease in Alec, but the disease did not lie in his
dissatisfaction. It lay in that poverty of life with which those are
satisfied who call such discontent disease. Such disease is the first
flicker of the aurora of a rising health.
This state of feeling, however, was only occasional; and a reviving
interest in anything belonging to his studies, or a merry talk with Mr
Cupples, would dispel it for a time, just as a breath of fine air will
give the sense of perfect health to one dying of consumption.
But what made these questionings develope into the thorns of a more
definite self-condemnation???-the advanced guard sometimes of the roses
of peace-???was simply this:
He had written to his mother for money to lay out upon superior
instruments, and new chemical apparatus; and his mother had replied
sadly that she was unable to send it. She hinted that his education had
cost more than she had expected. She told him that she was in debt to
Robert Bruce, and had of late been compelled to delay the payment of
its interest.
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