EVERISH AIR

of the sick-chamber. Last week all his clock-wheels worked with ease,
and merrily struck the hours of feast and sleep. Afterward the wheels
dragged a little and annoyed him some. Suddenly a whole handful of sand
was thrown into the cogs, and the cogs have been grinding it and the
hammer striking continuously ever since. His brain is distracted, his
soul is sorely perplexed, and his mind is like an infant in
house-cleaning time, strangely in the way and infinitely aware of it.
Here lies proud-riding vanity, thrown from his high saddle. Kindnesses
are showered on him of which he feels that he deserves few, and yet
wants more.

SYMPATHY IS EXPRESSED

for him which greatly moves him, for he is accompanying the words he
hears with the ills he feels, while the speaker is speaking a
conventionality which he would feel had he the ability. The sick man
mentally resolves that all the mistakes of his life shall be corrected
if he shall survive, and yet there are few who are able to fulfill the
programmes thus formulated--frequently the thriftless man is more
prodigal after an illness which has stabbed his pride with an
advertisement of his indigence than he was before his great vow of
future economy was recorded up on the ceiling, where,

IN THE RIFTS OF THE PLASTER,

the Missouri River flows into the Mississippi! Perhaps if the would-be
reformer would take a look frequently at those objects in his whilom
sick-room which so riveted his fevered attention, some of their old
association would return upon him, and do him good. The ancients
practiced the memory in this way. After a course of meanderings through
a garden, each object represented and recalled some piece of knowledge
which it was important the pupil should retain in his mind. "Few
persons," says Thomas a Kempis "are made better by the pain and languor
of sickness; as few great pilgrims become eminent saints." Here lies
your bachelor now. He has always felt that when he got sick he could get
his gruel stewed as well by the hired girl of his landlady, as the
French say, as by a wife. He lies up there, O, so in need of care and
kindness!

HIS BRAGS WERE MADE IN TIME OF STRENGTH,

and he expected to have strength to keep himself stoical. But now he is
weak,--weak and truly miserable. He hears the people come in to their
supper, go to their rooms, wash, run gayly down-stairs, chat, go down
another pair of stairs,--and then come the jarring sounds of