Hitherto she has refused medicine,
rejected medical advice; no reasoning, no entreaty, has availed to
induce her to see a physician. After reading your letter she said,
"Mr. Williams's intention was kind and good, but he was under a
delusion: Homoeopathy was only another form of quackery." Yet she
may reconsider this opinion and come to a different conclusion; her
second thoughts are often the best.
'The _North American Review_ is worth reading; there is no mincing
the matter there. What a bad set the Bells must be! What appalling
books they write! To-day, as Emily appeared a little easier, I
thought the _Review_ would amuse her, so I read it aloud to her and
Anne. As I sat between them at our quiet but now somewhat melancholy
fireside, I studied the two ferocious authors. Ellis, the "man of
uncommon talents, but dogged, brutal, and morose," sat leaning back
in his easy chair drawing his impeded breath as he best could, and
looking, alas! piteously pale and wasted; it is not his wont to
laugh, but he smiled half-amused and half in scorn as he listened.
Acton was sewing, no emotion ever stirs him to loquacity, so he only
smiled too, dropping at the same time a single word of calm amazement
to hear his character so darkly portrayed.
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