extreme cases; but as a rule, it is the last
extreme of impertinence which one human being can offer to another. "You
have killed me," said a patient once to a physician who had rashly told
him he was incurable. He ought to have lived six months, but he was dead
in six' weeks. If we will only let Nature and the God of Nature alone,
persons will commonly learn their condition as early as they ought to
know it, and not be cheated out of their natural birthright of hope of
recovery, which is intended to accompany sick people as long as life
is comfortable, and is graciously replaced by the hope of heaven, or at
least of rest, when life has become a burden which the bearer is ready
to let fall.

Underbred people tease their sick and dying friends to death. The chance
of a gentleman or lady with a given mortal ailment to live a certain
time is as good again as that of the common sort of coarse people. As
you go down the social scale, you reach a point at length where the
common talk in sick rooms is of churchyards and sepulchres, and a kind
of perpetual vivisection is forever carried on, upon the person of the
miserable sufferer.

And so, in choosing your clergyman, other things being equal, prefer the
one of a wholesome and cheerful habit of mind and body. If you can get
along with people who carry a certificate in their faces that their
goodness is so great as to make them very miserable, your children
cannot. And whatever offends one of these little ones cannot be right in
the eyes of Him who loved them so well.

After all, as you are a gentleman or a lady, you will probably select
gentlemen for your bodily and spiritual advisers, and then all will be
right.

This repetition of the above words,--gentleman and lady,--which could
not be conveniently avoided, reminds me what strange uses are made of
them by those who ought to know what they mean. Thus, at a marriage
ceremony, once, of two very excellent persons who had been at service,
instead of, Do you take this man, etc.? and, Do you take this woman?
how do you think the officiating clergyman put the questions? It was, Do
you, Miss So and So, take this GENTLEMAN? and, Do you, Mr. This or That,
take this LADY?! What would any English duchess, ay, or the Queen of
England herself, have thought, if the Archbishop of Canterbury had
called her and her bridegroom anything but plain woman and man at such a
time?

I don't doubt the Poor Relation thought it was all very fine