[1] This facies has been recognized by the laity, and the folklore of Europe abounds in sayings about the facial expression of the consumptive. Writers of fiction and painters have also considered it “interesting,” and make great use of it in their productions. Many of the classical and modern painters have depicted this cast of countenance, showing the false euphoria of the smiling, tranquilly bright, yet melancholy eyes of the consumptive, which are perhaps best seen in Leonardo da Vinci’s La Gioconda—a picture of a phthisical face superior to any description that can be given of it.
—Fishberg: Pulmonary Tuberculosis [↑]
L’Envoi
By a curious irony of fate, the places to which we are sent when health deserts us are often singularly beautiful.
—Stevenson: Ordered South
“Keams Cañon!” A commonplace name, because a trading rover had made it home. Tom Keams has gone roving into shadowy lands. “Lu-kah-des-chin,” the place of the reeds, is the Navajo name. For nearly three hundred days of the year it possesses the finest climate in the world, air like wine, filtered clean and sweet through ten thousand square miles of unpolluted wilderness.
In those few remaining days are the contrasts. An odd change, at the close of a sunlit winter day, to have the sky suddenly go drab and dull, promising a bleak night, and then the added silence of the falling snow. Stealthily the storm would come upon us, whirling crisp dry flakes, weaving a magic veil to drape white all the cliffs. A new hush in the Desert. And at morning, a crystal landscape, glittering like an old-time Christmas card.
Chattering birds in springtime, pausing for a little from their travels, gossiping of Mexico and strange Southern lands. They rejoice in this oasis. The filmy gray of the cottonwoods lends them a screen; already the swelling buds are pale green against the colder tones of the Cañon walls. A last patch of snow on a north ledge suddenly seems to slip, and is gone; and where it was shows the newest bloom, a tiny bit of desert scarlet.