“Do you know what that is?” said I, holding up the feather.
No answer from the lips, but the eyes said, plainly, “I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
I varied the question. “Do you know where that came from?”
He started, pierced me through with those keen black eyes, then said, seizing the hand in which I held it with a grasp which secured my remembering him for many days, “You didn’t?—you couldn’t?—it isn’t?”
“Yes,” said I; “I drew it from your little girl’s cap; she sent it to you with her love.”
His grasp relaxed; and, burying his face in the pillow, he sobbed aloud. I waited, thinking he would recover himself, but no word came; hard, heavy sobs, only increasing in violence, shook the bed, and I was frightened at the terrible emotion I had called forth. Deeming it best not to notice it, I began quietly to give him an account of my trip, dwelling on the least exciting parts of it, but all of no avail; apparently he did not even hear me, and I saw that he was getting entirely beyond his own control.
What was to be done? Here was indeed a dilemma. He was exciting the attention of the whole ward; it was within half an hour of inspection when the surgeon in charge goes his rounds through the wards,—what would he say? Was this the way that the ladies excited their patients? But beyond and above all, he was injuring himself; and with the tendency to inflammation in his head, I dreaded the effect of such strong excitement, and yet all I said seemed but to increase it. Suddenly it occurred to me that (something on the principle of “similia similibus curantur,” little as I usually admire the practice) perhaps by evoking another feeling equally powerful, I might calm him; and knowing that no one, be it man or woman, will ever submit quietly to blame without an attempt at self-justification, I changed my tactics at once, and said:
“How it is possible, that a father, who has one grain of love for his children, can permit them to remain one day, or hour, in such a den as that, is to me a marvel that I cannot comprehend.”
The rûse was a perfect success. Starting up in his bed, with flashing eyes, he said, with a vehemence which at another time would have frightened me: