MEDICAL ODDS AND ENDS.
MY DEAR FRIENDS,—We are going to ring in now, and end our course. I will be sorry and glad, and you will be the same. We are this about everything. It is the proportion that settles it. I am, upon the whole, as we say, sorry, and I dare say on the whole you are not glad. I dislike parting with anything or anybody I like, for it is ten to one if we meet again.
My text is, "That His way may he known upon earth; His saving health to all nations." You will find it in that perfect little Psalm, the 67th. But before taking it up, I will, as my dear father used to say,—you all remember him, his keen eye and voice; his white hair, and his grave, earnest, penetrating look; and you should remember and possess his Canongate Sermon to you,—"The Bible, what it is, what it does, and what it deserves,"—well, he used to say, let us recapitulate a little. It is a long and rather kittle word, but it is the only one that we have. He made it longer, but not less alive, by turning it into "a few recapitulatory remarks." What ground then have we travelled over? First, our duties to and about the Doctor; to call him in time, to trust him, to obey him, to be grateful to, and to pay him with our money and our hearts and our good word, if we have all these; if we have not the first, with twice as much of the others. Second, the Doctor's duties to us. He should be able and willing to cure us. That is what he is there for. He should be sincere, attentive, and tender to us, keeping his time and our secrets. We must tell him all we know about our ailments and their causes, and he must tell us all that is good for us to know, and no more. Third, your duties to your children; to the wee Willie Winkies and the little wifies that come toddlin' hame. It is your duty to mind them. It is a capital Scotch use of this word: they are to be in your mind; you are to exercise your understanding about them; to give them simple food; to keep goodies and trash, and raw pears and whiskey, away from their tender mouths and stomachs; to give them that never-ending meal of good air, night and day, which is truly food and fire to them and you; to be good before as well as to them, to speak and require the truth in love,—that is a wonderful expression, isn't it?—the truth in love; that, if acted on by us all, would bring the millennium next week; to be plain and homely with them, never spaining their minds from you. You are all sorry, you mothers, when you have to spain their mouths; it is a dreadful business that to both parties; but there is a spaining of the affections still more dreadful, and that need never be, no, never, neither in this world nor in that which is to come. Dr. Waugh, of London, used to say to bereaved mothers, Rachels weeping for their children, and refusing to be comforted, for that simplest of all reasons, because they were not, after giving them God's words of comfort, clapping them on the shoulders, and fixing his mild deep eyes on them (those who remember those eyes well know what they could mean), "My woman, your bairn is where it will have two fathers, but never but one mother."
You should also, when the time comes, explain to your children what about their own health and the ways of the world they ought to know, and for the want of the timely knowledge of which many a life and character has been lost. Show them, moreover, the value you put upon health, by caring for your own.
Do your best to get your sons well married, and soon. By "well married," I mean that they should pair off old-fashionedly, for love, and marry what deserves to be loved, as well as what is lovely. I confess I think falling in love is the best way to begin; but then the moment you fall, you should get up and look about you, and see how the land lies, and whether it is as goodly as it looks. I don't like walking into love, or being carried into love; or, above all, being sold or selling yourself into it, which, after all, is not it. And by "soon," I mean as soon as they are keeping themselves; for a wife, such a wife as alone I mean, is cheaper to a young man than no wife, and is his best companion.
Then for your duties to yourselves. See that you make yourself do what is immediately just to your body, feed it when it is really hungry; let it sleep when it, not its master, desires sleep; make it happy, poor hard-working fellow! and give it a gambol when it wants it and deserves it, and as long as it can execute it. Dancing is just the music of the feet, and the gladness of the young legs, and is well called the poetry of motion. It is like all other natural pleasures, given to be used, and to be not abused, either by yourself or by those who don't like it, and don't enjoy your doing it,—shabby dogs these, beware of them! And if this be done, it is a good and a grace, as well as pleasure, and satisfies some good end of our being, and in its own way glorifies our Maker. Did you ever see anything in this world more beautiful than the lambs running races and dancing round the big stone of the field; and does not your heart get young when you hear,—
"Here we go by Jingo ring,
Jingo ring, Jingo ring;
Here we go by Jingo ring,
About the merry ma tanzie."
This is just a dance in honor of poor old pagan Jingo; measured movements arising from and giving happiness. We have no right to keep ourselves or others from natural pleasures; and we are all too apt to interfere with and judge harshly the pleasures of others; hence we who are stiff and given to other pleasures, and who, now that we are old, know the many wickednesses of the world, are too apt to put the vices of the jaded, empty old heart, like a dark and ghastly fire burnt out, into the feet and the eyes, and the heart and the head of the young. I remember a story of a good old Antiburgher minister. It was in the days when dancing was held to be a great sin, and to be dealt with by the session. Jessie, a comely, and good, and blithe young woman, a great favorite of the minister's, had been guilty of dancing at a friend's wedding. She was summoned before the session to be "dealt with,"—the grim old fellows sternly concentrating their eyes upon her, as she stood trembling in her striped short-gown, and her pretty bare feet. The Doctor, who was one of divinity, and a deep thinker, greatly pitying her and himself, said, "Jessie, my woman, were ye dancin'?"
"Yes," sobbed Jessie.