at any rate not agitate its body
out-of-doors. Lazy folk were suited well with reason good for laziness;
and gentle minds, that dreaded evil, gladly found its communication
stopped.

Combined excitement and exertion, strong amazement, ardent love, and a
cold of equal severity, laid poor Pet Carnaby by the heels, and reduced
him to perpetual gruel. He was shut off from external commune, and
strictly blockaded in his bedroom, where his only attendants were his
sweet mother, and an excellent nurse who stroked his forehead, and
called him "dear pet," till he hated her, and, worst of all, that Dr.
Spraggs, who lived in the house, because the weather was so bad.

"We have taken a chill, and our mind is a little unhinged," said
the skillful practitioner: "careful diet, complete repose, a warm
surrounding atmosphere, absence of undue excitement, and, above all, a
course of my gentle alteratives regularly administered--these are the
very simple means to restore our beloved patient. He is certainly making
progress; but I assure you, my dear madam, or rather I need not tell a
lady of such wonderfully clear perception, that remedial measures must
be slow to be truly efficacious. With lower organizations we may deal in
a more empiric style; but no experiments must be tried here--"

"Dr. Spraggs, I should hope not, indeed. You alarm me by the mere
suggestion."

"Gradation, delicately pursued, adapted subtly, discriminated nicely by
the unerring diagnosis of extensive medical experience, combined with
deep study of the human system, and a highly distinguished university
career--such, madam, are, in my humble opinion, the true elements
of permanent amelioration. At the same time we must not conceal
from ourselves that our constitution is by no means one of ordinary
organization. None of your hedger and ditcher class, but delicate,
fragile, impulsive, sensitive, liable to inopine derangements from
excessive activity of mind--"

"Oh, Dr. Spraggs, he has been reading poetry, which none of our family
ever even dreamed of doing--it is a young man, over your way somewhere.
Possibly you may have heard of him."

"That young man has a great deal to answer for. I have traced a very bad
case of whooping-cough to him. That explains many symptoms which I could
not quite make out. We will take away this book, madam, and give him
Dr. Watts--the only wholesome poet that our country has produced; though
even his opinions would be better express