ey
have a way of dying or a way of getting well, what medicines agree with
them and what drugs they cannot take, whether they are of the sort that
think nothing is the matter with them until they are dead as smoked
herring, or of the sort that send for the minister if they get a
stomach-ache from eating too many cucumbers,--who knows all about all the
people within half a dozen miles (all the sensible ones, that is, who
employ a regular practitioner),--such a man as that, I say, is not to be
replaced like a missing piece out of a Springfield musket or a Waltham
watch. Don't go! said I. Stay here and save our precious lives, if you
can, or at least put us through in the proper way, so that we needn't be
ashamed of ourselves for dying, if we must die. Well, Dr. Butts is not
going to leave us. I hope you will have no unwelcome occasion for his
services,--you are never ill, you know,--but, anyhow, he is going to be
here, and no matter what happens he will be on hand.

The village news is not of a very exciting character. Item 1. A new
house is put up over the ashes of the one in which your husband lived
while he was here. It was planned by one of the autochthonous
inhabitants with the most ingenious combination of inconveniences that
the natural man could educe from his original perversity of intellect.
To get at any one room you must pass through every other. It is blind, or
nearly so, on the only side which has a good prospect, and commands a
fine view of the barn and pigsty through numerous windows. Item 2. We
have a small fire-engine near the new house which can be worked by a man
or two, and would be equal to the emergency of putting out a bunch of
fire-crackers. Item 3. We have a new ladder, in a bog, close to the new
fire-engine, so if the new house catches fire, like its predecessor, and
there should happen to, be a sick man on an upper floor, he can be got
out without running the risk of going up and down a burning staircase.
What a blessed thing it was that there was no fire-engine near by and no
ladder at hand on the day of the great rescue! If there had been, what a
change in your programme of life! You remember that "cup of tea spilt on
Mrs. Masham's apron," which we used to read of in one of Everett's
Orations, and all its wide-reaching consequences in the affairs of
Europe. I hunted up that cup of tea as diligently as ever a Boston
matron sought for the last leaves in her old caddy after the tea-chests
had be