My thoughts involuntarily wander back to that golden period, five years ago, when I spent one night and day beneath your hospitable roof. I arrived, I remember, late in the evening. The bed-room to which you kindly conducted me, after a light but wholesome supper of doughnuts and cheese, was pleasing in respect to furniture, but questionable in regard to physiology. The house was not more than twenty years old, and the chamber must therefore have been aired within that distance of time, but not, I should have judged, more recently. Perhaps its close, oppressive atmosphere could not have been analyzed into as many separate odors as Coleridge distinguished in Cologne,—but I could easily identify aromatic vinegar, damp straw, lemons, and dyed silk gowns. And, as each of the windows was carefully nailed down, there were no obvious means of obtaining fresh air, save that ventilator said to be used by an eminent lady in railway-cars,—the human elbow. The lower bed was of straw, the upper of feathers, whose extreme heat kept me awake for a portion of the night, and whose abundant fluffy exhalations suggested incipient asthma during another portion. On rising from these rather unrefreshing slumbers, I performed my morning ablutions with the aid of some three teacupsful of dusty water,—for the pitcher probably held that quantity,—availing myself, also, of something which hung over an elegant towel-horse, and which, though I at first took it for a child's handkerchief, proved on inspection to be "Chamber Towel, No. 1."

I remember, as I entered the breakfast-room, a vague steam as of frying sausages, which, creeping in from the neighboring kitchen, obscured in some degree the six white faces of your wife and children. The breakfast-table was amply covered, for you were always what is termed by judicious housewives "a good provider." I remember how the beefsteak (for the sausages were especially destined for your two youngest Dolorosi, who were just recovering from the measles, and needed something light and palatable) vanished in large rectangular masses within your throat, drawn downward in a maelstrom of coffee;—only that the original whirlpool is, I believe, now proved to have been imaginary;—"that cup was a fiction, but this is reality." The resources of the house also afforded certain very hot biscuits or breadcakes, in a high state of saleratus;—indeed, it must have been from association with these, that certain yellow streaks in Mr. Ruskin's drawing of the rock, at the Athenaeum, awakened in me such an immediate sense of indigestion;—also fried potatoes, baked beans, mince-pie, and pickles. The children partook of these dainties largely, but without undue waste of time. They lingered at table precisely eight minutes, before setting out for school; though we, absorbed in conversation, remained at least ten;—after which we instantly hastened to your counting-room, where you, without a moment's delay, absorbed yourself in your ledger, while I flirted languidly with the "Daily Advertiser."

You bent over your desk the whole morning, occasionally having anxious consultations with certain sickly men whom I supposed to be superannuated bookkeepers, in impoverished circumstances, and rather pallid from the want of nutritious food. One of them, dressed in rusty black, with a flabby white neckcloth, I took for an ex-clergyman; he was absorbed in the last number of the "Independent," though I observed, at length, that he was only studying the list of failures, a department to which, as it struck me, he himself peculiarly appertained. All of these, I afterwards ascertained from your office-boy, were eminent capitalists; something had gone wrong in the market,—not in the meat-market, as I should have supposed from their appearance, but in the money-market. I believe that there was some sudden fall in the price of indigo. I know you looked exceedingly blue as we walked home to dinner.

Dinner was ready the instant we opened the front door. I expected as much; I knew the pale, speechless woman who sat at the head of your table would make sure of punctuality, if she died for it. We took our seats without a word. The party was smaller than at breakfast. Two of the children had staid at school, having their luncheon-baskets well filled from the cold remains of breakfast. Your eldest girl, Angelina, aged ten, one of those premature little grown women who have learned from the cradle that man is born to eat pastry and woman to make it, postponed her small repast till an indefinite future, and sat meekly ready to attend upon our wants. Nathaniel, a thin boy of eight, also partook but slightly, having impaired his appetite, his mother suspected, by a copious luncheon of cold baked beans and vinegar, on his return from school. The two youngest (twins) had relapsed to their couches soon after breakfast, in consequence of excess of sausage.

You were quite agreeable in conversation, I remember, after the first onset of appetite was checked. You gave me your whole theory of the indigo crisis, with minute details, statistical and geographical, of the financial condition and supposed present location of your principal absconding debtors. This served for what is called, at public dinners, the intellectual feast; while the carnal appetite was satisfied with fried pork, ditto roasted, strong coffee, turnips, potatoes, and a good deal of gravy. For dessert, (at which point Nathaniel regained his appetite,) we had mince-pie, apple-pie, and lemon-pie, the latter being a structure of a two-story description, an additional staging of crust being somehow inserted between upper and under. We lingered long at that noon meal,—fifteen minutes, at the very least; for you hospitably said that you did not have these little social festivals very often,—owing to frequent illness in the family, and other causes,—and mast make the most of it.

I did not see much of you during that afternoon; it was a magnificent day, and I said, that, being a visitor, I would look about and see the new buildings. The truth was, I felt a sneaking desire to witness the match-game on the Common, between the Union Base-Ball Club, No. 1, of Ward Eleven, and the Excelsiors of Smithville. I remember that you looked a little dissatisfied, when I came into the counting-room, and rather shook your head over my narrative (perhaps too impassioned) of the events of the game. "Those young fellows," said you, "may not all be shiftless, dissipated characters, yet,—but see what it comes to! They a'n't content with wasting their time,—they kill it, Sir, actually kill it!" When I thought of the manly figures and handsome, eager faces of my friends of the "Union" and the "Excelsior,"—the Excelsiors won by ten tallies, I should say, the return match to come off at Smithville the next month,—and then looked at the meagre form and wan countenance of their critic, I thought to myself, "Dolorosus, my boy, you are killing something besides Time, if you only knew it."

However, indigo had risen again, and your spirits also. As we walked home, you gave me a precise exhibit of your income and expenditures for the last five years, and a prospective sketch of the same for the next ten; winding up with an incidental delineation of the importance, to a man of business, of a good pew in some respectable place of worship. We found Mrs. D., as usual, ready at the table; we partook of pound-cake (or pound-and-a-half, I should say) and sundry hot cups of a very Cisatlantic beverage, called by the Chinese epithet of tea,—and went, immediately after, to a prayer-meeting. The church or chapel was much crowded, and there was a certain something in the atmosphere which seemed to disqualify my faculties from comprehending a single word that was spoken. It certainly was not that the ventilators were closed, for there were none. The minister occasionally requested that the windows might be let down a little, and the deacons invariably closed them again when he looked the other way. At intervals, females were carried out, in a motionless condition,—not, as it appeared, from conviction of sin, but from faintness. You sat, absorbed in thought, with your eyes closed, and seemed not to observe them. I remember that you were very much shocked when I suggested that the breath of an average sinner exhausted atmospheric air at the rate of a hogshead an hour, and asked you how much allowance the laws of the universe made for the lungs of church-members? I do not recall your precise words, but I remember that I finally found it expedient, as I was to leave for home in the early train, to spend that night at the neighboring hotel, where I indulged, on an excellent mattress, in a slumber so profound, that it seemed next morning as if I ought, as Dick Swiveller suggested to the single gentleman, to pay for a double-bedded room.

Well, that is all over now. You have given up business, from ill health, and exhibit a ripe old age, possibly a little over-ripe, at thirty-five. Your dreams of the forthcoming ten years have not been exactly fulfilled; you have not precisely retired on a competency, because the competency retired from you. Indeed, the suddenness with which your physician compelled you to close up your business left it closed rather imperfectly, so that most of the profits are found to have leaked out. You are economizing rather strictly, just now, in respect to everything but doctors' bills. The maternal Dolorosa is boarding somewhere in the country, where the children certainly will not have more indigestible food than they had at home, and may get less of it in quantity,—to say nothing of more air and exercise to aid digestion. They are not, however, in perfect condition. The twins are just getting up from scarlet fever; Nathaniel has been advised to leave school for a time; and something is thought to be the matter with Angelina's back. Meanwhile, you are haunting water-cures, experimenting on life-pills, holding private conferences with medical electricians, and thinking of a trip to the Bermudas.

You are learning, through all this, the sagest maxims of resignation, and trying to apply them. "Life is hard, but short," you say; "Providence is inscrutable; we must submit to its mysterious decrees." Would it not be better, my dear Dolorosus, to say instead, "Life is noble and immortal; God is good; we must obey his plain laws, or accept the beneficent penalties"? The rise and fall of health are no more accidental than the rise and fall of indigo; and it is the duty of those concerned in either commodity to keep their eyes open, and learn the business intelligently. Of the three proverbial desiderata, it is as easy to be healthy as to be wealthy, and much easier than to be wise, except so far as health and wisdom mean the same thing. After health, indeed, the other necessaries of life are very simple, and easily obtained;—with moderate desires, regular employment, a loving home, correct theology, the right politics, and a year's subscription to the "Atlantic Monthly," I have no doubt that life, in this planet, may be as happy as in any other of the solar system, not excepting Neptune and the fifty-five asteroids.

You are possibly aware, my dear Dolorosus,—for I remember that you were destined by your parents for the physician of your native seaside village, until you found a more congenial avocation in curing mackerel,—that the ancient medals represented the goddess Hygeia with a serpent three times as large as that carried by Aesculapius, to denote the superiority of hygiene to medicine, prevention to cure. To seek health as you are now seeking it, regarding every new physician as if he were Pandora, and carried hope at the bottom of his medicine-chest, is really rather unpromising. This perpetual self-inspection of yours, registering your pulse thrice a day, as if it were a thermometer and you an observer for the Smithsonian,—these long consultations with the other patients in the dreary parlor of the infirmary, the morning devoted to debates on the nervous system, the afternoon to meditations on the stomach, and the evening to soliloquies on the spine,—will do you no good. The more you know, under these circumstances, the worse it will be for you. You will become like Boerhaave's hypochondriacal student, who, after every lecture, believed himself to be the victim of the particular disease just expounded. We may even think too much about health,—and certainly too much about illness. I solemnly believe that the very best thing that could be done for you at this moment, you unfortunate individual, would be to buy you a saddle-horse and a revolver, and start you tomorrow for the Rocky Mountains, with distinct instructions to treat any man as a Border Ruffian who should venture to allude to the subject of disease in your presence.