ison, appear less dreadful than at home in our own
houses (for if it were not so, it would be an army of doctors and whining
milksops), and that being still in all places the same, there should be,
notwithstanding, much more assurance in peasants and the meaner sort of
people, than in others of better quality. I believe, in truth, that it
is those terrible ceremonies and preparations wherewith we set it out,
that more terrify us than the thing itself; a new, quite contrary way of
living; the cries of mothers, wives, and children; the visits of
astounded and afflicted friends; the attendance of pale and blubbering
servants; a dark room, set round with burning tapers; our beds environed
with physicians and divines; in sum, nothing but ghostliness and horror
round about us; we seem dead and buried already. Children are afraid
even of those they are best acquainted with, when disguised in a visor;
and so 'tis with us; the visor must be removed as well from things as
from persons, that being taken away, we shall find nothing underneath but
the very same death that a mean servant or a poor chambermaid died a day
or two ago, without any manner of apprehension. Happy is the death that
deprives us of leisure for preparing such ceremonials.

CHAPTER XX

OF THE FORCE OF IMAGINATION

"Fortis imaginatio generat casum," say the schoolmen.

["A strong imagination begets the event itself."--Axiom. Scholast.]

I am one of those who are most sensible of the power of imagination:
every one is jostled by it, but some are overthrown by it. It has a very
piercing impression upon me; and I make it my business to avoid, wanting
force to resist it. I could live by the sole help of healthful and jolly
company: the very sight of another's pain materially pains me, and I
often usurp the sensations of another person. A perpetual cough in
another tickles my lungs and throat. I more unwillingly visit the sick
in whom by love and duty I am interested, than those I care not for, to
whom I less look. I take possession of the disease I am concerned at,
and take it to myself. I do not at all wonder that fancy should give
fevers and sometimes kill such as allow it too much scope, and are too
willing to entertain it. Simon Thomas was a great physician of his time:
I remember, that happening one day at Toulouse to meet him at a rich old
fellow's house, who was troubled with weak lungs, and discoursing with
the patient abo