Show convalescence the return from illness to health Is like coming up from a dive supposing the time from when the swimmer first sees light through the water until ills his head rises to the surface to be the affair of weeks the change in physical condition may be slow but the change in orientation takes place in a twinkling and Is complete the eye no longer looks down into unplumbed deeps but back toward the light of jay day curiosity for the ultimate yields to a golden memory of familiar things friends household goods books barking dogs the freshness of grass and trees the body has reasserted itself the dreaming imagination Is dragged away from its goal by the galloping senses eye ear touch taste start upon a rampage especially does the appetite for food wax furious discovering itself endowed with power to transform a coddled egg into something rich and strange and to illumine chicken broth with a charm that no art can equal the universe lately shrunk to the sickroom now rises again like the genie out of the bottle in which lie he had been imprisoned the sickroom becomes a house of detention and at its door as in a seashell clapped to the ear the convalescent he arkens to all the rumors of the outer world henry heary dwight sedgwick in the atlantic |