Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/259

 Thank God, however, that you are now getting better, and that spring is approaching, and the time for the Marstand baths, and that you can have the benefit of them. And our poor Marie stands in need of them also. I do not thank Charlotte and all our friends for being so attentive to you, because that is quite natural, but I like them all the more for it, and think better of them than of the negligent good angels. And, my little Agatha, if the heart and the will could have wings, then I should be now in your chamber, and by your bed; or if, as I hope, you have said good bye to bed, by your side, as your stick or crutch, or your waiting-maid: and that you know.

Thanks be to homœopathy and my good watchful doctor, I am now again in better health, though not yet quite recovered, and have now and then relapses; but they are of short continuance, and as I now understand my complaint better, and how it ought to be treated, I hope to be myself again shortly. I have not been so during these winter months. My sun has been darkened, and at times so totally that I have feared being obliged to return to Europe with my errand in America uncompleted; I feared that it was not possible for me to stand the climate. And that has not a little astonished me, as I considered myself so strong, or so elastic, that I could bear and get through as much as any Yankee. But the malady which I have endured, and still endure, is like the old witch who could trip up even Thor.

It is a disagreeable, poisonous, insidiously serpent-like disease—a vampire which approaches man in the dark, and sucks away the pith and marrow of body, nerves, and even of soul. Half or two-thirds of the people in this country suffer, or have suffered, in some way from this malady; and I with them. The fault lies in the articles of food, in their mode of life, in the manner of warming their rooms, all of which would be injurious in any climate, but which in one so hot and exciting as this is