Majorie Daw | Page 3

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Transcript prepared by Susan L. Farley.

Majorie Daw
by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

I.
DR. DILLON TO EDWARD DELANEY, ESQ., AT THE PINES.
NEAR RYE, N.H.
August 8, 1872.
My Dear Sir: I am happy to assure you that your anxiety is without
reason. Flemming will be confined to the sofa for three or four weeks,
and will have to be careful at first how he uses his leg. A fracture of
this kind is always a tedious affair. Fortunately the bone was very
skilfully set by the surgeon who chanced to be in the drugstore where
Flemming was brought after his fall, and I apprehend no permanent
inconvenience from the accident. Flemming is doing perfectly well
physically; but I must confess that the irritable and morbid state of
mind into which he has fallen causes me a great deal of uneasiness. He
is the last man in the world who ought to break his leg. You know how
impetuous our friend is ordinarily, what a soul of restlessness and
energy, never content unless he is rushing at some object, like a
sportive bull at a red shawl; but amiable withal. He is no longer
amiable. His temper has become something frightful. Miss Fanny
Flemming came up from Newport, where the family are staying for the
summer, to nurse him; but he packed her off the next morning in tears.
He has a complete set of Balzac's works, twenty-seven volumes, piled
up near his sofa, to throw at Watkins whenever that exemplary
serving-man appears with his meals. Yesterday I very innocently
brought Flemming a small basket of lemons. You know it was a strip of
lemonpeel on the curbstone that caused our friend's mischance. Well,
he no sooner set is eyes upon those lemons than he fell into such a rage
as I cannot adequately describe. This is only one of moods, and the
least distressing. At other times he sits with bowed head regarding his
splintered limb, silent, sullen, despairing. When this fit is on him--and
it sometimes lasts all day--nothing can distract his melancholy. He
refuses to eat, does not even read the newspapers; books, except as
projectiles for Watkins, have no charms for him. His state is truly

pitiable.
Now, if he were a poor man, with a family depending on his daily labor,
this irritability and despondency would be natural enough. But in a
young fellow of twenty-four, with plenty of money and seemingly not a
care in the world, the thing is monstrous. If he continues to give way to
his vagaries in this manner, he will end by bringing on an inflammation
of the fibula. It was the fibula he broke. I am at my wits' end to know
what to prescribe for him. I have anaesthetics and lotions, to make
people sleep and to soothe pain; but I've no medicine that will make a
man have a little common-sense. That