“Bravo, Doctor, all this should go into the Lancet.”
“No, for it does not touch the question on the medical side, but the general and practical one: namely, that to create an unnecessary luxury, which is a nuisance to every body else, and to himself of very doubtful benefit—is—excuse me—the very silliest thing a young man can do. A thing, which, from my own experience, I'll not aid and abet any young man in doing. There, lecture's over, and kettle boiled—unless you prefer tobacco and the open air.”
He did not: and we sat down—“four feet upon a fender”—as the proverb says.
“Heigho! but the proverb doesn't mean four feet in men's boots,” said Treherne, dolefully. “I wish I was dead and buried.” I suggested that the light moustache he curled so fondly, the elegant hair, and the aristocratic outline of phiz, would look exceedingly well—in a coffin.
“Faugh! how unpleasant you are.”
And I myself repented the speech: for it ill becomes a man under any provocation to make a jest of Death. But, that this young fellow, so full of life, with every attraction that it can offer—health, wealth, kindred, friends—should sit croaking there, with such a used-up, lack-a-daisical air,—truly it irritated me.
“What's the matter—that you wish to rid the world of your valuable presence?—Has the young lady expressed a similar desire?”
“She?—Hang her! I won't think any more about her,” said the lad sullenly. And then, out poured the grand despair, the unendurable climax of mortal woe. “She cantered through the north camp this afternoon, with Granton—Colin Granton, and upon Granton's own brown mare.”
“Ha!—horrible vision! And you?—you
'Watched them go: one horse was blind;