Page:Six months in Kansas.djvu/78

74 the parties. The romance of disease exists only in beautiful engravings, never coming out of the frame: like pictures of charming children, who never have dirty faces, torn clothes, or an evident necessity for pocket-handkerchiefs, hair-brushes or fine-tooth combs;—so, in these places of pain, where, from the new and unfinished state of everything, comfort is not to be had, it is made pleasant to go and come only by remembering long sicknesses of my own—blessed gifts from heaven—wherein I learned how to suffer with those who suffer. Getting up to finish my round, and look in once more upon John, Sore Mouth says, sadly, "You have not been in this Territory long, if you had, you could not laugh so lightly." Poor fellow, he did not know that the laugh was designed to aid directly the operation of his medicine thrown in as a part of his necessary medical attendance.

Again I went in to poor John. I tried to make him know me; but he was wholly unconscious, and so little like a human being I could not bear it, and, for the first time, this morning, I went into the ten-foot wen, sat down by the cooking-stove, and burst into