My father, I am sure, wished to check the evil which, as a sensible man,
he could not but foresee; my state of health, however, won a larger
portion of indulgence than was good for me. The doctors into whose hands
I had fallen, were of the school now happily very much exploded: they
had one panacea for almost every ill, and that was the perilous drug
mercury. With it, they rather fed than physicked me; and its deleterious
effects on the nervous system were doubly injurious to me, as increasing
tenfold the excitability that required every curb. Among all the marvels
of my life, the greatest is that of my having grown up to be one of the
healthiest of human beings, and with an inexhaustible flow of even
mirthful spirits; for certainly I was long kept hovering on the verge of
the grave by the barbarous excess to which medical experiments were
carried; and I never entertained a doubt that the total loss of my
hearing before I was ten years old, was owing to a paralysis induced by
such severe treatment. God, however, had his own purposes to work out,
which neither Satan nor man could hinder. He overruled all for the
furtherance of his own gracious designs.
Shut out by this last dispensation from my two delightful resources,
music and conversation, I took refuge in books with tenfold avidity. By
this time I had added the British poets generally to my original stock,
together with such reading as is usually prescribed for young ladies;
and I underwent the infliction of reading aloud to my mother the seven
mortal volumes of Sir Charles Grandison.
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