s.

You are learning, through all this, the sagest maxims of resignation,
and trying to apply them. "Life is hard, but short," you say;
"Providence is inscrutable; we must submit to its mysterious decrees."
Would it not be better, my dear Dolorosus, to say instead, "Life is
noble and immortal; God is good; we must obey his plain laws, or accept
the beneficent penalties"? The rise and fall of health are no more
accidental than the rise and fall of indigo; and it is the duty of those
concerned in either commodity to keep their eyes open, and learn the
business intelligently. Of the three proverbial _desiderata_, it is as
easy to be healthy as to be wealthy, and much easier than to be wise,
except so far as health and wisdom mean the same thing. After health,
indeed, the other necessaries of life are very simple, and easily
obtained;--with moderate desires, regular employment, a loving home,
correct theology, the right politics, and a year's subscription to the
"Atlantic Monthly," I have no doubt that life, in this planet, may be as
happy as in any other of the solar system, not excepting Neptune and the
fifty-five asteroids.

You are possibly aware, my dear Dolorosus,--for I remember that you
were destined by your parents for the physician of your native
seaside village, until you found a more congenial avocation in curing
mackerel,--that the ancient medals represented the goddess Hygeia with a
serpent three times as large as that carried by Aesculapius, to denote
the superiority of hygiene to medicine, prevention to cure. To seek
health as you are now seeking it, regarding every new physician as if he
were Pandora, and carried hope at the bottom of his medicine-chest, is
really rather unpromising. This perpetual self-inspection of yours,
registering your pulse thrice a day, as if it were a thermometer and
you an observer for the Smithsonian,--these long consultations with
the other patients in the dreary parlor of the infirmary, the morning
devoted to debates on the nervous system, the afternoon to meditations
on the stomach, and the evening to soliloquies on the spine,--will do
you no good. The more you know, under these circumstances, the worse
it will be for you. You will become like Boerhaave's hypochondriacal
student, who, after every lecture, believed himself to be the victim of
the particular disease just expounded. We may even think too much about
_health_,--and certainly too much about _illness_. I solemnly bel