Then Ernest sent his small stock of goods to Debenham's, gave
up the house he had taken two and a half years previously, and returned
to civilisation.
I had expected that he would now rapidly recover, and was disappointed to
see him get as I thought decidedly worse. Indeed, before long I thought
him looking so ill that I insisted on his going with me to consult one of
the most eminent doctors in London. This gentleman said there was no
acute disease but that my young friend was suffering from nervous
prostration, the result of long and severe mental suffering, from which
there was no remedy except time, prosperity and rest.
He said that Ernest must have broken down later on, but that he might
have gone on for some months yet. It was the suddenness of the relief
from tension which had knocked him over now.
"Cross him," said the doctor, "at once. Crossing is the great medical
discovery of the age. Shake him out of himself by shaking something else
into him."
I had not told him that money was no object to us and I think he had
reckoned me up as not over rich. He continued:--
"Seeing is a mode of touching, touching is a mode of feeding, feeding is
a mode of assimilation, assimilation is a mode of recreation and
reproduction, and this is crossing--shaking yourself into something else
and something else into you.
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