Gout.—How ungrateful are you to say so! Is it not I, who, in the character of your physician, have saved you from the palsy, dropsy, and apoplexy? one or other of which would have done for you long ago, but for me.
Franklin.—I submit, and thank you for the past, but intreat the discontinuance of your visits for the future: for in my mind one had better die, than be cured so dolefully. Permit me just to hint, that I have also not been unfriendly to you. I never feed physician, or quack of any kind, to enter the list against you; if then you do not leave me to my repose, it may be said you are ungrateful too.
Gout.—I can scarcely acknowledge that as any objection. As to quacks, I despise them: they may kill you, indeed, but cannot injure me. And as to regular physicians, they are at last convinced, that the gout, in such a subject as you are, is no disease, but a remedy; and wherefore cure a remedy?—but to our business—There.—
Franklin.—Oh! Oh!—for heaven's sake leave me; and I promise faithfully never more to play at chess, but to take exercise daily, and live temperately.
Gout.—I know you too well. You promise fair; but, after a few months of good health, you will return to your old habits; your fine promises will be forgotten like the forms of the last year's clouds. Let us then finish the account and I will go. But I leave you with an assurance, of visiting you again at a proper time and place; for my object is your good, and you are sensible now, that I am your real friend.
FOOTNOTE:
[188] We have no authority for ascribing this paper to Dr. Franklin, but its appearance, with his name, in a small collection of his works printed a few years ago at Paris, and cited before, page 480. As the rest of the papers in that collection are genuine, this probably is also genuine. What we give is a translation. Editor.
TO MISS HUBBARD.