He met me at Pineville, and we took the trolley¹ car to his home. It is a big, neighbourless cottage on a hill surrounded by a hundred mountains.

We got off at his little private station, where John's family and Amaryllis met and greeted us. Amaryllis looked at me a trifle anxiously.

A rabbit came bounding across the hill between us and the house. I threw down my suit-case and pursued it hotfoot. After I had run twenty yards

and seen it disappear, I sat down on the grass and wept disconsolately².

"I can't catch a rabbit any more," I sobbed³. "I'm of no further use in the world. I may as well be dead."

"Oh, what is it -- what is it, Brother John?" I heard Amaryllis say.

"Nerves a little unstrung," said John, in his calm way. "Don't worry.Get up, you rabbit-chaser, and come on to the house before the biscuits

get cold." It was about twilight⁴, and the mountains came up nobly to Miss Murfree's descriptions of them.

Soon after dinner I announced that I believed I could sleep for a year or two, including legal holidays. So I was shown to a room as big and cool

as a flower garden, where there was a bed as broad as a lawn. Soon afterward⁵ the remainder of the household retired⁶, and then there fell upon

the land a silence.

I had not heard a silence before in years. It was absolute. I raised myself on my elbow and listened to it. Sleep! I thought that if I only

could hear a star twinkle or a blade of grass sharpen itself I could compose myself to rest. I thought once that I heard a sound like the sail

of a catboat flapping as it veered⁷ about in a breeze, but I decided⁸ that it was probably only a tack⁹ in the carpet. Still I listened.

Suddenly some belated little bird alighted upon the window-sill, and, in what he no doubt considered sleepy tones, enunciated¹⁰ the noise generally

translated as "cheep!"

I leaped into the air.

"Hey! what's the matter down there?" called John from his room above mine.

"Oh, nothing," I answered, "except that I accidentally bumped my head against the ceiling."

The next morning I went out on the porch and looked at the mountains. There were forty-seven of them in sight. I shuddered¹¹, went into the big

hall sitting room of the house, selected "Pancoast's Family Practice of Medicine" from a bookcase, and began to read. John came in, took the book

away from me, and led me outside. He has a farm of three hundred acres furnished with the usual complement¹² of barns, mules¹³, peasantry, and

harrows with three front teeth broken off. I had seen such things in my childhood, and my heart began to sink.

Then John spoke¹⁴ of alfalfa, and I brightened at once. "Oh, yes," said I, "wasn't she in the chorus of -- let's see --"

"Green, you know," said John, "and tender, and you plow¹⁵ it under after the first season."

"I know," said I, "and the grass grows over her."

"Right," said John. "You know something about farming, after all."

"I know something of some farmers," said I, "and a sure scythe¹⁶ will mow¹⁷ them down some day."

On the way back to the house a beautiful and inexplicable¹⁸ creature walked across our path. I stopped irresistibly¹⁹ fascinated, gazing at it. John

waited patiently, smoking his cigarette. He is a modern farmer. After ten minutes he said: "Are you going to stand there looking at that chicken

all day? Breakfast is nearly ready."

"A chicken?" said I.

"A White Orpington hen, if you want to particularize."

"A White Orpington hen?" I repeated, with intense interest. The fowl²⁰ walked slowly away with graceful²¹ dignity, and I followed like a child after the Pied Piper. Five minutes more were allowed me by John, and then he took me by the sleeve and conducted me to breakfast.

After I had been there a week I began to grow alarmed. I was sleeping and eating well and actually beginning to enjoy life. For a man in my

desperate condition that would never do. So I sneaked²² down to the trolley-car station, took the car for Pineville, and went to see one of the best physicians in town. By this time I knew exactly what to do when I needed medical treatment. I hung my hat on the back of a chair, and said rapidly:

"Doctor, I have cirrhosis of the heart, indurated arteries²³, neurasthenia, neuritis, acute indigestion, and convalescence²⁴. I am going to live on a

strict diet. I shall also take a tepid²⁵ bath at night and a cold one in the morning. I shall endeavour²⁶ to be cheerful, and fix my mind on

pleasant subjects. In the way of drugs I intend to take a phosphorous pill three times a day, preferably after meals, and a tonic²⁷ composed of

the tinctures of gentian, cinchona, calisaya, and cardamom compound. Into each teaspoonful²⁸ of this I shall mix tincture of nux vomica, beginning

with one drop and increasing it a drop each day until the maximum dose is reached. I shall drop this with a medicine-dropper, which can be procured²⁹

at a trifling³⁰ cost at any pharmacy³¹. Good morning."

I took my hat and walked out. After I had closed the door I remembered something that I had forgotten to say. I opened it again. The doctor had

not moved from where he had been sitting, but he gave a slightly nervous start when he saw me again.

"I forgot to mention," said I, "that I shall also take absolute rest and exercise.

After this consultation³² I felt much better. The reestablishing in my mind almost became gloomy again. There is nothing more alarming to a neurasthenic than to feel himself growing well and cheerful.

John looked after me carefully. After I had evinced so much interest in his White Orpington chicken he tried his best to divert my mind, and was

particular to lock his hen house of nights. Gradually the tonic mountain air, the wholesome³³ food, and the daily walks among the hills so alleviated³⁴

my malady³⁵ that I became utterly³⁶ wretched and despondent³⁷. I heard of a country doctor who lived in the mountains nearby. I went to see him and

told him the whole story. He was a gray-bearded man with clear, blue, wrinkled eyes, in a home-made suit of gray jeans.

In order to save time I diagnosed my case, touched my nose with my right forefinger³⁸, struck myself below the knee to make my foot kick, sounded my

chest, stuck out my tongue, and asked him the price of cemetery³⁹ lots in Pineville.

He lit his pipe and looked at me for about three minutes. "Brother," he said, after a while, "you are in a mighty⁴⁰ bad way. There's a chance for

you to pull through, but it's a mighty slim one."

"What can it be?" I asked eagerly. "I have taken arsenic⁴¹ and gold, phosphorus, exercise, nux vomica, hydrotherapeutic baths, rest,

excitement, codein, and aromatic⁴² spirits of ammonia. Is there anything left in the pharmacopoeia?"

"Somewhere in these mountains," said the doctor, "there's a plant growing-- a flowering plant that'll cure you, and it's about the only thing that

will. It's of a kind that's as old as the world; but of late it's powerful scarce and hard to find. You and I will have to hunt it up. I'm

not engaged in active practice now: I'm getting along in years; but I'll take your case. You'll have to come every day in the afternoon and help

me hunt for this plant till we find it. The city doctors may know a lot about new scientific things, but they don't know much about the cures that

nature carries around in her saddlebags."

So every day the old doctor and I hunted the cure-all plant among the mountains and valleys of the Blue Ridge⁴³. Together we toiled⁴⁴ up steep heights so slippery with fallen autumn leaves that we had to catch every sapling and branch within our reach to save us from falling. We waded⁴⁵

through gorges⁴⁶ and chasms⁴⁷, breast-deep with laurel and ferns; we followed the banks of mountain streams for miles; we wound our way like Indians

through brakes of pine -- road side, hill side, river side, mountain side we explored in our search for the miraculous⁴⁸ plant.

As the old doctor said, it must have grown scarce and hard to find. But we followed our quest. Day by day we plumbed⁴⁹ the valleys, scaled the

heights, and tramped the plateaus in search of the miraculous plant. Mountain-bred, he never seemed to tire. I often reached home too fatigued⁵⁰

to do anything except fall into bed and sleep until morning. This we kept up for a month.

One evening after I had returned from a six-mile tramp with the old doctor, Amaryllis and I took a little walk under the trees near the road.

We looked at the mountains drawing their royal-purple robes around them for their night's repose⁵¹.

"I'm glad you're well again," she said. "When you first came you frightened me. I thought you were really ill."

"Well again!" I almost shrieked⁵². "Do you know that I have only one chance in a thousand to live?"

Amaryllis looked at me in surprise. "Why," said she, "you are as strong as one of the plough-mules, you sleep ten or twelve hours every night, and

you are eating us out of house and home. What more do you want?"

"I tell you," said I, "that unless we find the magic -- that is, the plant we are looking for -- in time, nothing can save me. The doctor tells me

so."

"What doctor?"

"Doctor Tatum -- the old doctor who lives halfway⁵³ up Black Oak Mountain. Do you know him?"

"I have known him since I was able to talk. And is that where you go every day -- is it he who takes you on these long walks and climbs that have brought back your health and strength? God bless the old doctor."

Just then the old doctor himself drove slowly down the road in his rickety old buggy. I waved my hand at him and shouted that I would be on hand the

next day at the usual time. He stopped his horse and called to Amaryllis to come out to him. They talked for five minutes while I waited. Then

the old doctor drove on.

When we got to the house Amaryllis lugged⁵⁴ out an encyclopaedia⁵⁵ and sought a word in it. "The doctor said," she told me, "that you needn't call any

more as a patient, but he'd be glad to see you any time as a friend. And then he told me to look up my name in the encyclopaedia and tell you what

it means. It seems to be the name of a genus of flowering plants, and also the name of a country girl in Theocritus and Virgil. What do you

suppose the doctor meant by that?"

"I know what he meant," said I. "I know now."

A word to a brother who may have come under the spell of the unquiet Lady Neurasthenia.

The formula was true. Even though gropingly at times, the physicians of the walled cities had put their fingers upon the specific medicament.

And so for the exercise one is referred to good Doctor Tatum on Black Oak Mountain -- take the road to your right at the Methodist meeting house in

the pine-grove.

Absolute rest and exercise!

What rest more remedial than to sit with Amaryllis in the shade, and, with a sixth sense, read the wordless Theocritan idyl of the gold-bannered blue

mountains marching orderly into the dormitories of the night?