“Sam,” he replied, “the poet says with great truth,
“‘A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.’”
“Dear, dear,” said I, “there is another strange sail hove in sight, as I am alive. What flag does ‘Pierian’ sail under?”
“The magpies,” said he, with the air of a man that’s a goin’ to hit you hard. “It is a spring called Pierus after a gentleman of that name, whose daughters, that were as conceited as you be, were changed into magpies by the Muses, for challenging them out to sing. All pratin’ fellows like you, who go about runnin’ down doctors, ought to be sarved in the same way.”
“A critter will never be run down,” said I, “who will just take the trouble to get out of the way, that’s a fact. Why on airth couldn’t the poet have said Magpian Spring, then all the world would understand him. No, the lines would have had more sense if they had run this way:
“‘A little physic is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or drink not of the doctor’s spring.’”
Well, it made him awful mad. Sais he, “You talk of treating wounds as all unskilful men do, who apply balsams and trash of that kind, that half the time turns the wound into an ulcer; and then when it is too late the doctor is sent for, and sometimes to get rid of the sore, he has to amputate the limb. Now, what does your receipt book say?”
“It sais,” sais I, “that natur alone makes the cure, and all you got to do, is to stand by and aid her in her efforts.”
“That’s all very well,” sais he, “if nature would only tell you what to do, but nature leaves you, like a Yankee quack as you are, to guess.”
“Well,” sais I, “I am a Yankee, and I ain’t above ownin’ to it, and so are you, but you seem ashamed of your broughtens up, and I must say I don’t think you are any great credit to them. Natur, though you don’t know it, because you are all for art, does tell you what to do, in a voice so clear you can’t help hearing it, and in language so plain you can’t help understandin’ it. For it don’t use chain-shot words like ‘pharmacopia’ and ‘Pierian,’ and so on, that is neither Greek nor Latin, nor good English, nor vulgar tongue. And more than that, it shows you what to do. And the woods, and the springs, and the soil is full of its medicines and potions. Book doctrin’ is like book farmin’, a beautiful thing in theory, but ruination in practice.”