Douching

“ Is this due to any special faculty in the dowser, or has the twig itself anything to do with it? Held in balanced equilibrium, the forked twig, in the dowser’s hands, moves with a sudden and often violent motion, and the appearance of actual life in the twig itself, though regarded as mere stage-play by some, is popularly associated with the cause of the water-finder’s success. The theory that there is any direct connexion (“sympathy” or electrical influence) between the divining-rod and the water or metal, is however repudiated by modern science. ”

“ She turned the boat gently against a broken stump from which she could take a decaying fragment. An hour passed. She wearily [Pg 182] crossed the water to and fro, casting out her chips of punk, straining her eyes to see their motion in the moonlight. The breeze that had moved the smoke had gone again. Above the moon rode through white fleecy clouds. The water and air lay still and warm, inter-penetrated with the white light. The trees, without leaf or twigs, cast no shadow with the moon in the zenith.
The patient experimenting with the chips was a terrible ordeal to Ann. ”

“ They are, in fact, spouts of water, varying in size and temperature, applied by a hose-pipe with more or less force for a longer or shorter time against particular parts. A douche exercises a certain amount of friction, and a continued impulse on the spot to which it is applied, which stimulate the skin and the parts beneath it, quickening the capillary circulation. The effects of the douche are so powerful that it cannot be applied for more than a few minutes continuously. ”

“ In a poultry-yard in spring, when the first brood of 334ducklings go toddling to the water-side, no doubt all the younger or feebler broods, just hatched out of similar eggs, think these innovators dreadfully mistaken. “You are out of place,” they feebly pipe. “See how happy we are in our safe nests. Perhaps, by and by, when properly introduced into society, we may run about a little on land, but to swim!—never!” Meanwhile their elder kindred are splashing and diving in ecstasy; and, so surely as they are born ducklings, all the rest will swim in their turn. ”

“ They uttered a peculiar cry, and then spread their magnificent wings and away they flew from this cold country to warmer lands across the open sea, as was their usual custom. They rose so high that the Ugly Duckling felt a strange sensation come over him, a sort of delicious vertigo. He turned round and round in the water like a wheel, stretched his neck up into the air toward them, and uttered so loud and strange a cry that he was frightened at it himself. ”

“ When sufficiently strong the duckling scramble to the mouth of the hole, launch into the air with their little wings and feet outstretched, and drop into the water. If the nest is situated some distance from the water, the mother carries them to it one by one in her bill, carefully holding each so that is sustains no injury. ”

“ A duckling a few hours old will scratch the side of his head. It is true he may topple over in the process, through insufficient powers of balance, for the simultaneous performance of poising on one leg and having a good scratch with the other is no easy matter. But let not either our familiarity with such behaviour, nor some observed and laughable failure on the part of the duckling, blind us to the fact that this is a congenital activity, and one of no little complexity, indicating a definite organic nexus. ”

“ But Doggie just wags his tail and capers,
And never an egg has he.
"Now, Dobbin, Dobbin, I'm sure you must have one,
Hid down in your manger there."
But Dobbin lays back his ears and whinnies,
With "Come and look, if you dare!"
"Piggywig, Piggywig, grunting and squealing,
Are you crying 'Fresh eggs for sale'?"
No! Piggy, you're very cold and unfeeling,
With that impudent quirk in your tail.
"You wise old Gobbler, you look so knowing,
I'm sure you can find me an egg.
You stupid old thing! just to say 'Gobble-gobble!'
85 And balance yourself on one leg." ”

“ But it would be too melancholy if I were to tell all the misery and care which the Duckling had to endure in the hard winter. It lay out on the moor among the reeds when the sun began to shine again and the larks to sing; it was a beautiful spring.
Then all at once the Duckling could flap its wings; they beat the air more strongly than before, and bore it strongly away; and before it well knew how all this had happened, it found itself in a great garden, where the elder trees smelt sweet, and bent their long green branches down to the canal that wound through the region. ”

“ The douche consists of a stream of water, as thick as one's arm, falling from a height of twenty-four feet. A pipe, narrowing to the end, conducts the stream for the first six feet of its fall, and gives it a somewhat slanting direction. The water falls, we need hardly say, with a tremendous rush, and is beaten to foam on the open wooden floor. There were two douches at Sudbrook: one, of a somewhat milder nature, being intended for the lady patients. Every one is a little nervous at first taking this bath. ”

“ As a swimmer and diver the tame Duck has very few equals among feathered folk. Even as a duckling she does not require a single swimming-lesson, but at the first sight of water plunges boldly in and begins hunting for worms and other delicacies. ”

“ I wonder, therefore, that so many of these mother eiders are without their young ones, for they should all have hatched out a brood of them not so very long ago. Why, too, should so many be swimming with one duckling only? ”

“ As the lightning scorns the oak, as the fire triumphs over the venerable pile, as the swollen river scoffs at the P. W. D., while arch after arch tumbles into its gurgling whirlpools, so the Dhobie, dashing your cambric and fine linen against the stones, shattering a button, fraying a hem, or rending a seam at every stroke, feels a triumphant contempt for the miserable creature whose plodding needle and thread put the garment together. This feeling is the germ from which the Dhobie has grown. ”

“ I’ll give ducats bright to thee!
Filled with joy, the old woman hastened to spread out four plates under the tree. Then the Hen shook herself, and let fall on one plate the worn heller, but only little stones on all the others.
“Is that all?” exclaimed the old woman angrily.
“No, here is something more,” clucked the Hen, and she slung the needle into the old woman’s eye.
Upon this the old woman beat the Hen soundly, and went back to her husband’s house, begged his pardon and made it all up with him. Whenever he wanted an egg [108] she gave him one, and he always gave her a ducat in exchange. ”

“ It sent the Brotherhood of Failings sprawling in every direction, while the Incubator Baby flew to the water's edge, and John Dough's armor-clad body was knocked down and pressed into the soft sand until it was level with the surface. ”

“ The discovery of a toy duck in the soap dish, presumably the property of some former juvenile visitor, contributed not a little to this new and happier frame of mind. What with one thing and another, I hadn’t played with toy ducks in my bath for years, and I found the novel experience most invigorating. For the benefit of those interested, I may mention that if you shove the thing under the surface with the sponge and then let it go, it shoots out of the water in a manner calculated to divert the most careworn. ”

“ But by-and-by the little duckling-like sound was heard at another point, and then at another; and this continued in September, until, by the middle of that month, you could walk miles along the river, and before you left the sound of one little brood hungrily crying to be fed behind you, the little peep-peep of another brood would begin to be heard in advance of you.
Often enough it is "dogged as does it" in bird as well as in human affairs, and never had birds more deserved to succeed than these dogged little grebes. ”

“ A duckling only a few hours old if placed in water swims with orderly strokes. The stimulus of water on the breast may be regarded as a sensory presentation which is followed by a definite and adaptive application of behaviour. ”

“ Don't turn your feet inwards; a well-educated duckling always keeps his legs far apart, like his father and mother, just so,—look! now bow your necks, and say, 'quack.'"
And they did as they were told. But the other ducks who were in the yard looked at them, and said aloud, "Only see! now we have another brood,—as if there were not enough of us already; and fie! how ugly that one is! we will not endure it." And immediately one of the ducks flew at him, and bit him in the neck. ”

“ Now it happened, as is common, that the miller's wife had set a number of Duck eggs under a hen, which in due time were incubated; and of course the ducklings, as soon as they came forth, ran with natural instinct to the water, and the hen was in a sad pucker—her maternity urging her to follow the brood, and her instinct disposing her to keep on dry land. ”

“ When the last duckling has accomplished its fall, the brood gather again about the old bird and are led by her to the nearest water, which is seldom far away, and is generally convenient to shelters and hiding-places. ”

“ Sometimes boys try to climb up a barn that way.
When Master Duckbill is swimming, he looks like the bunches of weeds floating in the water. But he cannot stay there too long, for he grows very tired trying to float. ”

“ The hen with a brood of ducklings no doubt has intuitions which seem to place her inside them, and not merely to know them analytically; but when the ducklings take to the water, the whole apparent intuition is seen to be illusory, and the hen is left helpless on the shore. ”

“ Some wild geese came by, and they laughed at the duckling, too. Just then some guns {187} went bang! bang! The hunters were all around. The hunting dogs came splash! into the swamp, and one dashed close to the duckling. The dog looked at him and went on.
"Well, I can be thankful for that," sighed he. "I am so ugly that even the dog will not bite me."
When all was quiet, the duckling started out again. A storm was raging, and he found shelter in a poor hut. Here lived an old woman with her cat and her hen. The old woman could not see well, and she thought he was a fat duck. ”

“ Meanwhile the loud cracking which had startled him was followed by a crash awful beyond all telling, and I saw the whole roof of the cavern break away. Great rocks were falling all about us; behind, a black gulf had opened; whirling down from snow-clad peaks now for the first time visible, a mighty wind came sweeping, splashing the rain about as though some bursting reservoir had been suddenly emptied out upon our devoted heads, but through it all that same strange calmness still held its sway.
“Hope!” I cried, flinging one arm about Maurice who was sinking slowly down upon the rocky ledge. ”

“ Maurice, your weight is something fearful.”
Maurice staggered to his feet, and catching my arm clung to me trembling; yet he was entirely cool.
“This is no earthquake,” he said. “I have experienced too many shocks since I have been in the East to make a mistake.”
“But what else then? We are supposed to be on a mountain—is the mountain tumbling down?” asked the Doctor.
“It is a wash out of some sort,” I asserted boldly. “You know we decided some time since that we were in a limestone region, Doctor; the cavern may have been undermined for years for all we know.” ”

“ I think he will grow to be pretty. Perhaps he stayed too long in the egg."
"Well, make yourselves at home," said the old duck. "If you find an eel's head, you may bring it to me."
And they did make themselves at home—all but the poor ugly duckling. His life was made quite miserable. The ducks bit him, and the hens pecked him. So it went on the first day, and each day it grew worse.
The poor duckling was very unhappy. At last he could stand it no longer, and he ran away. As he flew over the fence, he frightened the little birds on the bushes. ”

“ No nervous dread of a ducking would have checked the completeness of his bound, because he would have often been ducked before, and would have discovered that in most cases, if the clothes be changed at once, a ducking is not worth mentioning—from a hydropathic point of view is, in fact, beneficial—and he would have cleared the river with comfort to himself and confusion to his friend, and without a ducking or the uneasiness of conscience caused by the knowledge that he had disobeyed his mother. ”

“ The old man turns at the barn, but Mike comes on down to us.
“Howdy,” says Mike. “How’s everything, boys?”
“Ain’t able to kick,” says Telescope. “How’s it with you?”
“Tolable. See Doughgod in town?”
“He was there the last we seen of him,” admits Muley. “Why?”
“Going down to see him. Dang this trustee business, anyway. Nothing but trouble. Me and the old man have decided to accept that teacher that wrote to Doughgod, even if she is a female. Never mix into the school-teacher business, boys. She’s ——!”
“She is,” agrees Muley, and we all nods. ”

“ The sixth drop gathered, and fell; already the seventh was like a seedling pearl in its place. The dying wolf yanked affectionately at my hand, but I put her by and undid my tunic. Big and bright that drop hung to the spout lip; another minute and it would fall. A beautiful drop, I laughed, peering closely at it, many-coloured, prismatic, flushing red and pink, a tiny living ruby, hanging by a touch to the green rim above; enough! enough! ”