find nowhere but in the Psalms and
in Job.

I have said that though delicate he was never ill: this was all the
worse for him, for, odd as it may seem, many a man's life is lengthened
by a sharp illness; and this in several ways. In the first place, he is
laid up, out of the reach of all external mischief and exertion, he is
like a ship put in dock for repairs; time is gained. A brisk fever
clarifies the entire man; if it is beaten and does not beat, it is like
cleaning a chimney by setting it on fire; it is perilous but thorough.
Then the effort to throw off the disease often quickens and purifies and
corroborates the central powers of life; the flame burns more clearly;
there is a cleanness, so to speak, about all the wheels of life.
Moreover, it is a warning, and makes a man meditate on his bed, and
resolve to pull up; and it warns his friends, and likewise, if he is a
clergyman, his people, who if their minister is always with them, never
once think he can be ever anything but as able as he is.

Such a pause, such a breathing-time my father never got during that part
of his life and labors when it would have availed most, and he was an
old man in years, before he was a regular patient of any doctor. He was
during life subject to sudden headaches, affecting his memory and
eyesight, and even his speech; these attacks were, according to the
thoughtless phrase of the day, called bilious; that is, he was sick, and
was relieved by a blue pill and smart medicine. Their true seat was in
the brain; the liver suffered because the brain was ill, and sent no
nervous energy to it, or poisoned what it did send. The sharp racking
pain in the forehead was the cry of suffering from the anterior lobes,
driven by their master to distraction, and turning on him wild with
weakness and fear and anger. It was well they did cry out; in some
brains (large ones) they would have gone on dumb to sudden and utter
ruin, as in apoplexy or palsy; but he did not know, and no one told him
their true meaning, and he set about seeking for the outward cause in
some article of food, in some recent and quite inadequate cause.

He used, with a sort of odd shame and distress, to ask me why it was
that he was subjected to so much suffering from what he called the lower
and ignoble regions of his body; and I used to explain to him that he
had made them suffer by long years of neglect, and that they were now
having their revenge, and in their own way I hav