I have a complaisant feeling as I walk about that I have thus done more good than any man living.
I am still very ill.
The curious things an invalid is gravely recommended to try! One day I was sitting in that great cosmopolitan museum, the waiting-room at Charing Cross station, wearily glancing from time to time at the clock, and reckoning how long it would be before I could get home. There is nothing so utterly tiring to the enfeebled as an interview with a London physician. So there I sat, huddled of a heap, quite knocked up, and, I suppose, must have coughed from time to time. By-and-by, a tall gentleman came across the room and sat down beside me. "I hope I don't intrude," said he, in American accents. "I was obliged to come and speak to you—you look bad. I hate to hear anybody cough." He put an emphasis on hate, a long-drawn nasal haate, hissing it out with unmeasured ferocity. "I haate to hear anybody cough. Now I should like to tell you how to cure it, if you don't mind."
"By all means—very interesting," I replied.
"I was bad at home, in the States," said he. "I was on my back four years with a cough. I couldn't do anything—couldn't help myself; four years, and I got down to eighty-seven pounds. That's a fact, I weighed eighty-seven pounds."
"Very little," I said, looking him over; he was tall and broad-shouldered, not very thick, a square-set man.
"I tried everything the doctors recommended—it was no use; they had to give me up. At last a man cured me; and how do you think he did it?"
"Can't think—should much like to know."
"Crude petroleum," said the American. "That was it. Crude petroleum! You take it just as it comes from the wells; not refined, mind. Just crude. Ten drops on a bit of sugar three times a day, before meals. Taste it? No, not to speak of; you don't mind it after a little while. I had in a ten-gallon keg. I got well. I got up to two hundred and fifty pounds. That's true. I got too fat, had to check it. But I take the drops still, if I feel out of sorts. Guess I'm strong enough now. Been all over Europe."
I looked at him again; certainly, he did appear strong enough.