The Dead Alive

The Dead Alive Kısa Özet

*Heart all right,* said the doctor. *Lungs all right. No organic disease that I can discover. Philip Lefrank, don’t alarm yourself. You are not going to die yet. The disease you are suffering from is--overwork. The remedy in your case is rest.* So the doctor spoke, in my chambers in the Temple

(London); having been sent for to see me about half an hour after I had alarmed my clerk by fainting at my desk. I have no wish to intrude myself needlessly on the reader’s attention; but it may be necessary to add, in the way of explanation, that I am a *junior* barrister in good practice. I come from the channel Island of Jersey. The French spelling of my name (Lefranc) was Anglicized generations since in the days when the letter *k* was still used in England at the end of words which now terminate in *c.* We hold our heads high, nevertheless, as a Jersey family. It is to this day a trial to my father to hear his son described as a member of the English bar. *Rest!* I repeated, when my medical adviser had done. *My good friend, are you aware that it is term-time? The courts are sitting. Look at the briefs waiting for me on that table! Rest means ruin in my case.*