The Duke answered by a Country Miss.
Since I am not writing a medical history, I need not go on to quote the long list of the names of those who from the old Greek days to the present time have been both authors and successful medical practitioners. Their bare names would fill a large volume, and who would care to read them? To the general reader they would be quite unwelcome. The reason why medical authors are so little known is, that their writings have been too wearisome for the general reader. Such English authors as the satirical Wolcot (Peter Pindar), the courteous essayist Drake, the poetical and nature-loving Davy, and the “single-hearted, affectionate” Dr. Moir, are remembered, while greater and deeper thinkers and writers are, with their works, buried in oblivion.
When the Duke of Kent was last in America (1819), he was one day taking observations in the country, when he entered a cosy little farm-house, where he noticed a pretty young girl, reading a book.
“Do you have books here, my dear?” he asked, contemptuously.
“O, yes, sir,” replied the girl naively, “we have the Bible and Peter Pindar.”
That was a model house. The Bible and fun-provoking “Peter Pindar!” Under such a roof you will find no guile. Here you will avoid the extremes of “all work and no play,” for the mind, “that makes Jack a dull boy,” and “all play and no work,” which “makes him a mere toy.”
I have visited some houses in New England where the Bible, and “Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted,” were the only books to be seen; others where nothing was to be found upon the shelves but a vile collection of novels, such as Mrs. Partington has termed “yaller-cupboard literature.” These need no comment, in either case.
The Pilgrims and the Peas.
Our only excuse for copying this from Pindar will be found in reading the poem, slightly abbreviated. The pilgrims were ordered by the priest to do penance by walking fifty miles with peas in their shoes.