oggerel verses I have seen, perhaps in an old
almanac, which are so pertinent in illustration of the point in my
patient's character which these remarks are intended to expose, that I
have ventured to insert them:--

"The miser Sherdi, on his sick-bed lying,
Affrighted, groaning, fainting, wheezing, dying,
Expecting every hour to lose his breath,
Enters a Dervise: 'Holy Father, say,
As life seems parting from this sinful clay,
What can preserve me from the jaws of death?'

"'Sacrifice, dear son, good joints of meat,--
Of lamb and mutton for the priest and poor.
Nay, shouldst thou from the Koran lines repeat,
Those lines might possibly thy health restore,'

"'Thank you, good father, you have said enough;
Your counsels have already given me ease.
Now as my sheep are all a great way off,
I'll quote holy our Koran, if you please.'"

At length my patient began, most evidently, to decline. There were
various marks on him and in him, of approaching dissolution. When
pressed, as I frequently was, to say definitely what the disease
was--that is, to give it a name--under which Mr. ---- labored, I only
replied that he was suffering from premature old age. This always
awakened surprise, and led to much and frequent inquiry how it was that
a man of fifty-eight years could be dying of mere old age. My
explanations, whenever attempted,--for sometimes in my pride of
profession I wholly evaded them,--were usually, in substance like the
following:--

"Mr. ---- was feeble by inheritance. He never had that firmness of
constitution which several of his brothers now possess. Then, too, he
was precocious. His body and mind, both of them, came to maturity very
early; which, as you know, always betokens premature decay. Men live
about four times as long, when not cut short by disease, as they are in
reaching maturity. As he was apparently mature at fourteen or fifteen,
he might very naturally be expected to wear out at or before sixty.

"But then, in addition to this, he has all his lifetime labored too
hard, not only from necessity, but from habit and choice. His ambition,
it is well known, has been unlimited, except by his want of strength to
accomplish. He has only ceased to labor hard when he had strength to
labor no longer, or when it was so dark or so cold or so stormy as to
prevent him.

"Then of late years he has had the care and anxiety which are almost
ins