selves temperate and moderate eaters, while consuming at a
meal the provender sufficient for a family; and when, after an hour's
steady performance, they sit with hurried breathing and half-closed
eyelids, sullen, stupid, and stertorous, drowsy and dull, saturated with
stout and stuffed with Stilton, they growl out a thanksgiving that they
are not like other men--epicures and wine-bibbers. Out upon them, I say!
Let me have my light meal, be its limits a cress, and the beverage that
ripples from the rock beside me; but be it such, that, while eating,
there is no transfusion of the beast devoured into the man, nor, when
eaten, the semi-apoplectic stupor of a gorged boa!

Sir Harry did the honours of the table, and sustained the burden of the
conversation, to which Crotty contributed but little, the young man
and myself being merely noneffectives; nor did we separate until the
_garcon_ came to warn us that the Saal was about to close for the night.

CHAPTER XXV. A WATERING-PLACE DOCTOR

Nothing is more distinct than the two classes of people who are to
be met with in the morning and in the afternoon, sauntering along the
_allees_ of a German watering-place. The former are the invalid portion,
poured forth in numbers from hotel and lodging-house; attired in every
absurdity of dressing-room toilette, with woollen nightcaps and flannel
jackets, old-fashioned _douillettes_ and morocco slippers, they glide
along, glass in hand, to some sulphur spring, or to repose for an hour
or two in the delights of a mud bath. For the most part, they are the
old and the feeble, pale of face and tottering in step. The pursuit of
health with them would seem a vain and fruitless effort; the machine
appears to have run its destined time, and all the skill of man is
unavailing to repair it. Still, hope survives when strength and youth
have failed, and the very grouping together in their gathering-places
has its consolation; while the endless diversity of malady gives an
interest in the eye of a sick man.

This may seem strange, but it is nevertheless perfectly true. There is
something which predisposes an invalid to all narratives of illness;
they are the topics he dwells on with most pleasure, and discourses
about with most eagerness. The anxiety for the 'gentleman next door' is
neither philanthropy, nor is it common curiosity. No, it is perfectly
distinct from either; it is the deep interest in the course of symptoms,
in the ups and do