There is a hammock over there--of pineapple fibre, it looks
from here. A hammock is very becoming when one is eighteen, and has
golden hair, and dark eyes, and an emerald-colored illusion dress
looped up after the fashion of a Dresden china shepherdess, and is
chaussee like a belle of the time of Louis Quatorze. All this
splendor goes into that hammock, and sways there like a pond-lily
in the golden afternoon. The window of my bedroom looks down on
that piazza--and so do I.
But enough of the nonsense, which ill becomes a sedate young
attorney taking his vacation with an invalid father. Drop me a
line, dear Jack, and tell me how you really are. State your case.
Write me a long, quite letter. If you are violent or abusive, I'll
take the law to you.
III.
JOHN FLEMMING TO EDWARD DELANEY.
August 11, 1872.
Your letter, dear Ned, was a godsend. Fancy what a fix I am in--I,
who never had a day's sickness since I was born. My left leg weighs
three tons. It is embalmed in spices and smothered in layers of
fine linen, like a mummy. I can't move. I haven't moved for five
thousand years. I'm of the time of Pharaoh.
I lie from morning till night on a lounge, staring into the hot
street. Everybody is out of town enjoying himself. The brown-stone-
front houses across the street resemble a row of particularly ugly
coffins set up on end. A green mould is settling on the names of
the deceased, carved on the silver door-plates.
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