Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/71



I have started my cure, he writes on 18. 7. 17.'', which promises to be a most strenuous, arduous and tedious affair. I have to take daily two soda-water tumblers of strong sulphur water and two ordinary tumblers of warm magnesia water; and on alternate days (a) a Nauheim bath and (b) a hot-air bath''

''It is raining steadily. This doesn't matter. But that sulphur-water, on an empty stomach, at 8 a.m.! Two-and-twenty ounces of it, hot! The stench of it! It is said to remind one of rotten eggs; but, as I have never smelt a rotten egg, it reminds me of nothing and only suggests hell.''  Sugar seems to have been more scarce in Harrogate than in London; and Teixeira's appeals and contrivances were always pathetic and sometimes frantic. My wife did manage to get half a pound of it flung at her head this morning, he writes on 19. 7. 17.'' I had so entirely forgotten the essential rudeness of the people of Yorkshire that its discovery came upon me as an utter surprise. I amuse myself by overcoming it with smiles. Smiles are unfamiliar symptoms to them and take them aback.''