majority of people, their
present must always preponderate in interest; and it is right that it
should, since our work is in the present, though our hopes may be in the
future, as our memories and examples must be in the past. There must be
some of this intense, vivid feeling about what is immediate, to enable
us to do the work of _now_--to bear the burden, surmount the impediment,
and appreciate the blessing of _now_. St. Paul very wisely bade us
"beget a temperance in all things" (I wish he had told us how to do it).
He also said, "Behold, _now_ is the accepted time, _now_ is the day of
salvation." ...

The medical mode of treatment in this country appears to me frightfully
severe, and I should think, with subjects as delicate as average
American men and women, it might occasionally be fatal. I have a violent
prejudice against bleeding, and would rather take ten doses of physic,
and fast ten days, than lose two ounces of my blood. Of course, in
extreme cases, extreme remedies must be resorted to; but this seems to
be the usual system of treatment here, and I distrust medical systems,
and cannot but think that it might be safer to reduce the quality rather
than the quantity of the vital fluid. Abstinence, and vegetable and
mineral matters of divers kinds, seem to me natural remedies enough; but
the merciless effusion of blood, because it is inflamed, rather reminds
me of my school-day cutting and gashing of my chilblains, in order to
obtain immediate relief from their irritation....

S----'s scarlet fever has been followed by the enlargement of one of the
tonsils, which grew to such a size as to threaten suffocation, and the
physician decided that it must be removed. This was done by means of a
small double-barreled silver tube, through the two pipes of which a wire
is passed, coming out in a loop at the other end of the instrument. This
wire being passed round the tonsil, is tightened, so as to destroy its
vitality in the course of four and twenty hours, during which the tube
remains projecting from the patient's mouth, causing some pain and
extreme inconvenience. The mode usually resorted to with adults (for
this, it seems, is a frequent operation here), is cutting the tonsil off
at once; but as hemorrhage sometimes results from this, which can only
be stopped by cauterizing the throat, that was not to be thought of with
so young a patient.... At the end of the twenty-four hours, the
instrument is removed, the dise