A new and
more strenuous course of treatment requires these holidays, if
his nerves are not to break down under it.
"The suggestion, after all, came from him, and I am merely
improving on it. . . . This continent has started a small
heat-wave--the first of the summer. Now Farrell, who perspires
freely, tells me that he doesn't mind any amount of heat, so
that it isn't accompanied by noise: but noise and heat combined
drive him crazy. I had myself noted that while the tall
buildings here excited no curiosity in him, he acted as the
veriest rubberneck under the clang and roar of the overhead
trains; and the din of Broadway, he confessed, gave him vertigo
after the soft tide of traffic that moves broad and full--
'strong without rage, without o'erflowing full'--down Tottenham
Court Road, embanked with antique furniture or colourable
imitations.
"He made this confession to me in the _entr'acte_ of a silly
vaudeville, to witness which we had been carried by an elevator
some sixteen storeys and landed on a roof crowded with palms and
funny people behaving like millionaires.
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