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Doctor Therne by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard
page 60 of 162 (37%)
quality. Moreover, I was glad to find, unlike his wife, who touched
nothing but water, that Mr. Strong did not include teetotalism among
his eccentricities. On the contrary, he produced a bottle of really fine
port for my especial benefit.

In the course of our conversation I discovered that the Strongs, who
had had no children, devoted themselves to the propagation of various
"fads." Mr. Strong indeed was anti-everything, but, which is rather
uncommon in such a man, had no extraneous delusions; that is to say, he
was not a Christian Scientist, or a Blavatskyist, or a Great Pyramidist.
Mrs. Strong, however, had never got farther than anti-vaccination, to
her a holy cause, for she set down the skin disease with which she was
constitutionally afflicted to the credit, or discredit, of vaccination
practised upon her in her youth. Outside of this great and absorbing
subject her mind occupied itself almost entirely with that well-known
but most harmless of the crazes, the theory that we Anglo-Saxons are the
progeny of the ten lost Tribes of Israel.

Steering clear of anti-vaccination, I showed an intelligent sympathy
with her views and deductions concerning the ten Tribes, which so
pleased the gentle little woman that, forgetting the uncertainty of my
future movements, she begged me to come and see her as often as I liked,
and in the meanwhile presented me with a pile of literature connected
with the supposed wanderings of the Tribes. Thus began my acquaintance
with my friend and benefactress, Martha Strong.



At ten o'clock on the following morning I returned to the dock, and the
nurse repeated her evidence in corroboration of Sir John's testimony.
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