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Read Ebook: Dr. Hardhack's Prescription: A Play for Children in Four Acts by Rice K McDowell Katharine McDowell Stowe Harriet Beecher
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Ebook has 212 lines and 12677 words, and 5 pages
DR. H. Trained fiddlesticks! Send her somewhere to a good honest farmhouse in the hills, and let her run barefoot in the morning dew, drink new milk from the cow--
MAMMA P. Oh, Doctor, not new milk! Not unsterilized milk!
DR. H. I mean what I say, madam. Let her drink new milk from the cow, romp in a good wide barn, learn to hunt hens' eggs, a few things like this, and I warrant me you'll see another pair of cheeks in a year. Take off all whalebones and strings around her lungs. Give her a chance, madam, give her a chance!
MAMMA P. But what medicine shall she take, Doctor?
DR. H. Medicine? No medicine. Medicine won't do her any good. You may make an apothecary's shop of her stomach--
AUNT F. Oh, oh!
AUNT F. Oh, oh!
MAMMA P. Iron in her blood! I never heard the like!
DR. H. Yes, iron, red particles, globules or whatever you please to call them. Her blood is all water and lymph, and that is the reason that her cheeks and lips look so like a cambric handkerchief, why she pants and puffs if she goes up-stairs. Her heart is all right if there were only blood to work it in, but it sucks and wheezes like a dry pump for want of vital fluid. She must have more blood, madam, and Nature must make it for her.
GRANDMA P. We were thinking of going to Newport, Doctor.
DR. H. Yes, to Newport! To a ball every night and a flurry of dressing and flirtation every morning! No such thing! Send her to an unfashionable old farmhouse where there was never a more exciting party than a quilting frolic heard of. Let her learn the difference between huckleberries and blackberries, learn where checkerberries grow thickest and dig up sweet flag root with her own hands as country children do. It would do her good to plant a few hills of potatoes--
DR. H. Well, ladies, I must be going. Good-morning to you all.
MAMMA P. What strange ways he has!
AUNT F. But then you know he's all the fashion.
MAMMA P. People talk of his being small. I never once thought of it.
GRANDMA P. Brains, my dear, brains, or in other words;--good common sense.
CURTAIN.
MAMMA P. Well, Doctor, we have decided to let Emily go and stay in the country as you have directed. I have arranged everything and found a pleasant place for her with a companion of her own age who is called Pussy Willow.
DR. H. H'm. Pussy Willow. Well, that begins to sound right. Wouldn't have found any girl named Pussy Willow at Newport, I'll warrant you.
AUNT HIGHTY-TIGHTY. Do, pray, dear Dr. Hardhack, tell us just how she must be dressed for that cold mountain region.
AUNT F. It makes me shiver to think of it.
AUNT H.-T. Must she have high-necked, long-sleeved flannels?
AUNT F. I will go right down and buy her half-a-dozen at once.
DR. H. Not so fast. Let's see about this young lady. I thought so. I supposed that there wasn't much breathing allowed behind there.
MAMMA P. Oh, I do assure you, Doctor, Emily never dresses tightly.
EMILY. No, indeed! I despise tight lacing. I never wear my clothes any more than just comfortable.
DR. H. Never saw a woman that did! The courage and constancy of the female sex in bearing inconveniences is so great, however, that that will be no test at all. Give me that thing. You wouldn't catch a man saying he felt comfortable under such circumstances. But only persuade a girl that she looks stylish and pretty with her waist drawn in, and you may lace her up till the very life leaves her, and with her dying breath she will tell you she is nothing more than "comfortable". So, my young lady, you don't catch me in that way! You must leave off belts and tight waists of all sorts for six months at least, and wear only loose sacques so that your lungs may have some chance to play and fill with the vital air that I am going to send you to breathe up in the hills.
E. But, Doctor, I don't believe I could hold myself up. When I sit up in a loose dress I feel so weak I hardly know what to do. I need the support of something stiff around me.
DR. H. That is because all those nice, strong muscles around your waist which Nature gave you to hold you up, have been bound down and bandaged and flattened until they have no strength in them.
E. Do you suppose, Doctor, if I should dress as you tell me for six months, that I would get my health again?
DR. H. It would go a long way towards it. You fashionable girls are not good for much, to be sure, but if a doctor gets a chance to save one of you in the way of business, he can't help wishing to do it. So I just give you your choice.
E. Of course I would like to be well, and in the country up there nobody will see me, so it's no matter how I look.
MAMMA P. To be sure it's no matter. Only get your health, my dear, and then we'll see.
CURTAIN.
MAMMA P. I wish you would caution Emily, Doctor. I'm sure she's over-exerting herself, for she has sent home seven pats of butter of her own churning!
DR. H. Never fear, my dear madam. It's only that there is more iron getting into her blood, that's all. Let her alone, or tell her to do it more yet!
MAMMA P. But, Doctor, may not the thing be carried too far?
DR. H. For gentility, you mean? Don't you remember Marie Antoinette made butter and King Louis was a miller at Marly?
AUNT F. But just read the Doctor from Emily's last letter.
MAMMA P. Yes, just hear what she has written, Doctor. "You have no idea how different life looks to me now that I live a little for somebody besides myself. Why have I been so foolish as to suppose I was happy in living such a lazy, useless life as I have lived?"
DR. H. Iron in her blood, my dear madam, iron in her blood! She'll come home a strong, bouncing girl.
AUNT F. Oh, shocking!
MAMMA P. But, Doctor, I can't see as we shall ever get her home again. I keep writing and writing, and still she says she isn't ready. There is always something ahead.
DR. H. Let her alone, madam, let her alone. Give Nature a good chance. You will all undo all the good she's getting as soon as you get her home. I insist upon it that she shall keep away from you all as long as she likes.
GRANDMA P. I haven't heard such good sense talked by any doctor in a long time.
AUNT F. And then you know, he's all the fashion now.
CURTAIN.
MAMMA P. Well, now, Dr. Hardhack, doesn't our Emily look beautiful?
AUNT F. So healthy!
AUNT H.-T. Such a splendid color!
DR. H. Pretty fair, pretty fair. A good summer's work, that.
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