There is something more than mere good measures in the following lines. There is a satire upon Love and Mammon, when the deep affections of the heart reach a greater depth in the pocket:
“Dear friend, I’m glad to meet you here,
But scarce know what to say,
For such an angel I have seen
At your mamma’s to-day!
Of fairer form than Venus, when
She trod the Grecian shore;
And then such splendid hair and eyes
I never saw before.
“Her air and manners were divine,
Above all petty arts;
Oh, surely she was formed to reign
The peerless Queen of Hearts.
Dear Bob, we have been college friends,
And friendship’s still the same;
Now only tell me who she is—
Oblige me with her name.
“‘Fine hair and eyes!’—‘the Queen of Hearts!’
Who can she be?—oh, yes!
I know her now—why, Frederick, that’s
My sister’s governess!’
Your sister’s governess!!—Indeed
I thought it might be so;
She looks genteel—but still there is
About her something low!”
It is not a little amusing, or it would be if it were not rather a serious matter oftentimes, to hear a surgeon who loves his profession talk with another of the “splendid fungus” which he had recently removed, or the “beautiful case of amputation of both arms at the shoulder,” which he had just witnessed. A fair travesty of this is afforded in the letter purporting to come from an apothecary in the country to a friend in London, wherein, among other things, he wrote: “My patients are rather select than numerous,
but I think the red lamp and brass plate may attract a few. I had a glorious case of dislocation of the shoulder last week, and nearly pulled the fellow in half with the assistance of two or three bricklayers who were building next door. The other doctor tried first, and couldn’t reduce it, because he had no bricklayers at hand. This has got my name up, rather. They are terrible Goths down here though. You can scarcely conceive the extent of their ignorance. Not one in twenty can read or write; and so all my dispensing-labels which I tie on the bottles are quite thrown away. A small female toddled into the surgery the other day, and horrified me by drawling out:
“‘If you please, sir, mother’s took the lotion, and rubbed her leg with the mixture!’
“This might have been serious, for the lotion contained a trifle of poison; but Jack and I started off directly; and as it happened very luckily to be washing-day, we drenched the stupefied woman with soap-suds and pearl-ash, until every thing was thrown off from the stomach, including, I suspect, a quantity of the lining membrane. This taught me the lesson, that a medical man should always have his instruments in order; for if Jack had not borrowed my stomach-pump to squirt at the cats with, a good deal of bother might have been avoided. But he is a clever fellow at heart, and would do any thing for me. He quite lived on the ice during the frost, tripping every body up he came near; and whether he injured them seriously or not, I know the will was good, and was therefore much obliged to him!”