[CHAPTER II.]
THE HAPPY CONDITION IN WHICH SHEPPARD LEE IS AT LAST PLACED.
If there be among my readers any person so discontented with his lot that he would be glad to exchange conditions with another, I think, had he been acquainted with Mr. Arthur Megrim, he would have desired an exchange with him above all other persons in the world; for Mr. Megrim possessed all those requisites which are thought to ensure happiness to a human being. He was young, rich, and independent; of a good family (he boasted the chivalrous blood of the Megrims); of a sound body, and serene temper; and with no appetite for those excesses which ruin the reputation, while they debase the minds and destroy the peace of youth. His years, as I have mentioned already, were twenty-five or six; his revenues were far above his wants, and enabled him to support his town-house, which was the most elegant one in the village, where he lived remote from the care and trouble of his plantations; and as for independence, that was manifestly complete, he being a bachelor, and the sole surviver of his family, excepting only his sister, Miss Ann Megrim, who managed his household, and thus took from his mind the only care that could otherwise have disturbed it.
What then in the whole world had Mr. Megrim to trouble him? Nothing on earth—and for that reason, to speak paradoxically, he was more troubled than any one else on earth. Labour, pain, and care—the evils which men are so apt to censure Providence for entailing upon the race—I have had experience enough to know, are essential to the true enjoyment of life, serving, like salt, pepper, mustard, and other condiments and spices, which are, by themselves, ungrateful to the palate, to give a relish to the dish that is insipid and cloying without them. Who enjoys health—who is so sensible of the rapture of being well, as he who has just been relieved from sickness? Who can appreciate the delightful luxury of repose so well as the labourer released from his daily toil? Who, in fine, tastes of the bliss of happiness like him who is introduced to it after a probation of suffering? The surest way to cure a boy of a love of cakes and comfils, is to put him apprentice to a confectioner. The truth is, that the sweets of life, enjoyed by themselves, are just as disgusting as the bitters, and can only be properly relished when alternated or mingled with the latter.
But as this is philosophy, and the reader will skip it, I will pursue the subject no further, but jump at once from the principle to the practical illustration, as seen in my history while a resident in the body of Mr. Arthur Megrim.
I was, on the sudden, a rich young man, with nothing on earth to trouble me. I had lands and houses, rich plantations, a nation or two of negroes, herds of sheep and cattle, with mills, fisheries, and some half dozen or more gold-mines, which last—and it may be considered, out of Virginia, a wondrous evidence of my wealth—were decidedly the least valuable of all my possessions. With all these things I was made acquainted by my sister Ann, or otherwise, it is highly probable, I should have known nothing about them; for during the whole period of my seventh existence, I confined myself to my property in the village, not having the least curiosity to visit my plantations, which, as everybody told me, were in good hands.
In the village itself I had every thing about me to secure happiness—a fine house, abundance of servants, the whole under the management of the best of housekeepers, my sister Ann, with horses and carriages—for which, however, I cared but little, thinking it laborious to ride, and as tedious to be driven—and, above all, friends without number, who treated me with a respect amounting to veneration (for, it must be remembered, I was the richest man in the county), and with a degree of affection little short of idolatry; but whom, however, I thought very troublesome, tiresome people, seeing that they visited me too often, and wearied me to death with long conversations about every thing.
Among them all, there was but one for whom I felt any friendship; and he was a young doctor named Tibbikens, for whom my sister Ann had a great respect, and who had been retained by her to assist in taking care of my digestive apparatus—that same digestive apparatus of mine being a hobby on which my sister lavished more thought and anxiety than I believe she did upon her own soul—not meaning to reflect upon her religion, however, for she was a member of the Presbyterian church, and quite devout about the time of communion. The cause of her solicitude, as she gave me frequent opportunity to know by her allusion to the fact, was her having been once afflicted in her own person with a disorder of the digestive apparatus, which it had been the good fortune of Doctor Tibbikens to cure by a regimen of bran bread and hickory ashes water; and hence her affection for the doctor and the remedy. I liked the doctor myself because he had the same solicitude about my health, without troubling me with advice except when I asked it, or finding much fault when I did not follow it; because his conversation was agreeable, except when he was in a scientific humour, and did not require any efforts on my part to keep it up; because he liked terapins and white-backs as well as myself, and was of opinion they were wholesome, provided one ate them in moderation; and, in fine, because he took pains to help me to amusement, and was of great assistance in dissipating somewhat of that tedium which was the first evil with which I was afflicted in the body of Mr. Arthur Megrim. I believe the doctor had a strong fancy for my sister; but she used to declare she could never think of marrying, and thus being drawn from what she felt to be the chief duty of her existence, namely—the care of my digestive apparatus.