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November 18.
The daily course I go through presupposes a degree of vigor beyond anything I ever had before.
For this week, I have gone before breakfast to the wave-bath and let all the waves and billows roll over me till every limb ached with cold and my hands would scarcely have feeling enough to dress me. After that I have walked till I was warm, and come home to breakfast with such an appetite!
Brown bread and milk are luxuries indeed, and the only fear is that I may eat too much.
At eleven comes my douche, to which I have walked in a driving rain for the last two days, and after it walked in the rain again till I was warm.
(The umbrella you gave me at
Natick answers finely, as well as if it were a silk one.) After dinner I roll ninepins or walk till four, then sitz-bath, and another walk till six.
I am anxious for your health; do be persuaded to try a long walk before breakfast.
You don't know how much good it will do you. Don't sit in your hot study without any ventilation, a stove burning up all the vitality of the air and weakening your nerves, and above all, do
amuse yourself.
Go to
Dr. Mussey's and spend an evening, and to father's and
Professor Alien's. When you feel worried go off somewhere and forget and throw it off. I should really rejoice to hear that you and father and mother, with
ProfessorAllen and
Mrs. Allen,
Mrs. K., and a few others of the same calibre would agree to meet together for dancing cotillons.
It would do you all good, and if you took Mr. K.'s wife and poor Miss Much-Afraid, her daughter, into the alliance it would do them good.
Bless me!
what a profane set everybody would think you were, and yet you
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are the people of all the world most solemnly in need of it. I wish you could be with me in
Brattleboroa and coast down hill on a sled, go sliding and snowballing by moonlight!
I would snowball every bit of the
hypo out of you!
Now, my dear, if you are going to get sick, I am going to come home.
There is no use in my trying to get well if you, in the mean time, are going to run yourself down.
