But it's any odds the patient will be blistered out of life.

Therefore, O my friends, take heart, and these indignities endure,

Although every week brings news of an indubitable cure;

We have lived and flourished freely ever since the world began,

And our lineage is as ancient surely as is that of man;

While I'll venture the prediction, as a wind-up to my song,

That, despite these dreadful Doctors, we may haply live as long.


BLONDEL UP TO DATE.

(A Fragment from a History of the Future.)