Some skilful, some not fit to shoot for nuts,
Walk for their game or take their stand in butts;
And, wondrous fact, as all the scribes proclaim,
Each from a separate butt destroys his game.
At least it was so when the Emperor shot, so
With non-Imperials it perhaps is not so.
I am never irritable myself; I am sometimes justifiably annoyed by the unreasonable conduct of a friend. But I have often noticed the most melancholy irritability in others, and have wondered why they gave way to it, and what it portended. Now I know. I have been reading the Medical Press and Courier, and I learn from it that "this hyperæsthesia of the temper is the direct outcome of overwork and want of sleep; in fact, it is a morbid sensitiveness of the cells of the cerebral cortex due to exhaustion or under-nutrition. Irritability is, therefore a clinical sign of some importance, the more so because it is often the premonitory indication of impending breakdown. Under these circumstances, the condition is usually most marked during the forenoon, and is associated with a distaste for food at breakfast time. Later on, even the humanising effect of a good lunch fails to raise circulatory activity to the standard required for adequate cerebral nutrition, and the irritability becomes chronic, yielding only to the influence of repeated doses of a diffusible stimulant, such as brandy and soda. The remedy naturally only aggravates the symptom, which is sooner or later followed by other manifestations of cerebral exhaustion."
When you're lost in the whirl of a medical vortex,