"Johnnie, wake up ... are you sick?"
"Please go away from me and let me alone." I turned my face to the wall
in loathing.
"I'll call a doctor."
* * * * *
The doctor came. He felt my pulse. Put something under my tongue.
Whispered my father in a room, apart. Left.
My father returned, dejected, yet trying to act light and merry.
"What did the doctor say?" I forced myself to ask of him.
"To be frank, Johnnie ... you're old enough to learn the truth ... he
thinks you're taken down with consumption."
"That's what my mother died of."
My father shuddered and put his face down in his hands. I felt a little
sorry for him, then.
"Well you've got to go West now ... and work on a farm ... or
something."
* * * * *
I began to get ready for my trip West. Surely enough, I had consumption,
if symptoms counted ... pains under the shoulder blades ... spitting of
blood ... night-sweats....
But my mind was quickened: I read Morley's _History of English
Literature_ ... Chaucer all through ... Spenser ... even Gower's
_Confessio Amantis_ and Lydgate's ballads ... my recent discovery of
Chatterton having made me Old English-mad.
As I read the life of young Chatterton I envied him, his fame and his
early death and more than ever, I too desired to die young.
* * * * *
The week before I was to set out my father calmly discovered to me that
he intended I should work on a farm as a hand for the next four years,
when I reached Ohio .
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