and so,
they called themselves Plutonians and Neptunians, and made great
converts to their respective opinions.

Gulliver tells us of "Big-endians" and "Little-endians," who hated
each other like poison; and thus it is, our social condition is like a
row in an Irish fair, where one strikes somebody, and nobody thinks
the other right.

Oh! for the happy days of heretofore, when the two kings of Brentford
smelled at one nosegay. It couldn't happen now, I promise you.

One of their majesties would have insisted on the petals, and the
other been equally imperative regarding the stamina: they'd have
pushed their claims with all the weight of their influence, and there
would have been soon little vestige of a nosegay between them.

[Illustration]

But to come back, for all this is digression. The subdivision of
labour, with all its advantages, has its reverse to the medal. You are
ill, for instance. You have been dining with the Lord Mayor, and
hip-hipping to the health of her Majesty's ministers; or drinking,
mayhap, nine times nine to the independence of Poland, or civil and
religious liberty all over the globe--or any other fiction of large
dinners. You go home, with your head aching from bad wine, bad
speeches, and bad music; your wife sees you look excessively flushed;
your eyes have got an odd kind of expression, far too much of the
white being visible; a half shut-up look, like a pastry-cook's shop on
Sunday; there are evident signs, from blackness of the lips, that in
your English ardour for the navy you have made a "port-hole" of your
mouth; in fact, you have a species of semi-apoplectic threatening,
that bodes ill for the insurance company.

A doctor is sent for--he lives near, and comes at once--with a glance
he recognises your state, and suggests the immediate remedy--the
lancet.

"Fetch a basin," says somebody, with more presence of mind than the
rest.

"Not so fast," quoth the medico. "I am a pure physician--I don't
bleed: that's the surgeon's affair. I should be delighted to save the
gentleman's life--but we have a bye-law against it in the college.
Nothing could give me more pleasure than to cure you, if it wasn't for
the charter. What a pity it is! I'm sure I wish, with all my heart,
the cook would take courage to open a vein, or even give you a bloody
nose with the cleaver."

Do you think I exaggerate here? Try the experiment--I only ask that.

Sending for the surgeon does not solve the difficu