Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/121

109 almost died of it, up at the top of an hotel, alone. He declared that he would never put his foot inside the place again. It was a very horrible idea, I must confess—death, alone, in a strange hotel, in a strange city.'

'But, if he's afraid of fever, surely it is rather a strange thing to go to' 'Yes, yes, it is! But men are made up of such inconsistencies. I, for example, am shudderingly afraid of small-pox. Yet I have been through a cholera epidemic: nursed diphtheritic cases; known cancer, and what not besides.' 'King Alfred used to pray that God's will might be done in all things, but that he should prefer not to die of a loathsome disease. I should perhaps be afraid of such things too, if it wasn't that …' I paused.

'Wasn't what.'" he said.

'O, an idea of mine!—I don't believe that I shall ever catch anything again, somehow!'

'Fearlessness is half the battle.… I too have prayed to God that I may not die of a disease that makes others fearful of me and myself loathe myself.'

'And I do not see why God should not grant your prayer, if' I left the rest, If He is and can, unsaid; for I had seen his face contract a little.

'I beg your pardon,' I said, 'if I have offended you.'

'Oh no! I am foolish to notice it. I should not have, but that it recalled to me that the same vile bartering thought had, I am ashamed to say, occurred to me too, as it were despite myself, before now. You see I am trembling' (he held up his hand) 'like a terrified woman. Upon my word I ought to be ashamed of myself!' He resumed more slowly:

'I cannot quite account for this hysterical dread of one particular disease. My father died of it just before I was born, and my mother was nigh losing life, and then reason, in giving birth to me. Perhaps that is enough to excuse my poor nerves.… But I've not much belief in these things. Hereditaribility, as Herbert Spencer would say, has been done to death now-a-days.'

I remembered a somewhat contrary remark to this of his, and smiled a little to myself.