Page:Six months in Kansas.djvu/94

90 to my calling you 'Uncle Jeff,’ for I am in my second childhood?" "Call me anything you please, so you only get well," was his reply.

Now it dawns upon me more fully, that I am sick. I beg to get up. I beg, too, if I cannot get up, that they will not tell you. Indeed, I'm quite sure I can write you myself in a few days ; and, like my sick people over the way, I am ready to speak falsely almost, rather than you shall hear how badly-off we are. I can form no idea of the time I have been laid aside. By the pain and weariness, and the dead level of though^ it seems as though time moved sluggishly, and would never end. How powerless we all lie here; full of the strange fancies of sick people; longing for something quite impossible to obtain; or if obtained, quite unsuitable for us to have.

But! the water the water,—gushing down the stony streams of dear New England!—never failing in the old mossy-stoned wells—how our lips parch for some of it! how our thoughts dwell upon its coolness, abundance, and sparkling clearness, until, in feverish dreams, we seem to reach and taste it ! How we go back, always to pleasant home-looking