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XLVII.

A FORBIDDEN TOPIC.

WHICH SOME PEOPLE PERSIST IN INTRODUCING.

Why don’t they stop it?  Why do some people persist, spite of my hopes and prayers, my silent tears and protestations, in asking if “I’m well,” when I’m before their eyes apparently the personification of health?

Why am I of that unfortunate class of beings who are afflicted with friends ("Heaven defend me from such friends”) who appear to take a fiendish delight in recounting to me my real or (by them) imagined ill-looks; who come into my presence, and scrutinizing me closely, inquire, with what looks to me like a shade of anxiety, “Are you sick?” and if I, in astonishment, echo, “Sick? why, no; I never felt better in my life,” observe, with insulting mock humility, “O, excuse me; I thought you looked badly,” and turn again to other subjects.

But I do not flatter myself they are done with me.  I know their evil-working dispositions are far from satisfied; and, presently they renew the attack by asking, still more obnoxiously, “My dear, are you sure you are quite well today? you certainly are pale;” and if I, thus severely cross-questioned, am induced to admit, half sarcastically, and, perhaps, just to note the effect, that I have—­as who has not—­a little private ache somewhere about me (that, by the way, I considered was only mine to bear, and therefore nobody’s business but my own, and which may have been happily forgotten for a few moments), I have removed the barrier, given the opportunity desired, and the flood rushes in.  “I knew you were not well,” they cry, triumphantly.  “Your complexion is very sallow; your lips are pale; your eyes look dull, and have dark rings under them; and surely you are thinner than when I saw you last”—­concerning all which I may have doubts, though I have none that a frantic desire is taking possession of me to get away, and investigate these charges; and when, finally, I am released from torture, I fly to my good friend, the mirror; and, having obtained from it the blissful reassurance that these charges are without foundation in my features, I feel like girding on my armor and confronting my disagreeable ex-callers and all their kind with a few pertinent (or impertinent) questions.

I want to ask them if it does them any particular good to go and sit in people’s houses by the hour, watch their every look and action, and harrow up their feelings by such gratuitous information?  I want to ask them if they suppose our eyesight is not so sharp as theirs?  And I take great pleasure in informing them, and in politely and frigidly requesting them to remember, that, so far as my observation goes, when people are ill, or looking ill, they are not so blind, either to feelings or appearances, as not to have discovered the fact; that, indeed, they must