minor operations in
surgery may be performed with least pain by placing the foot in a bath of
red-hot iron." Would you not like to see Professor Pluecker, with his
trowsers duly tucked up, washing his feet in a pailful of this very
soothing fluid? And would it not be a fit martyrdom for sanitary doctors,
if we could compel them also to sacrifice their legs in a cause, kin to
their own, of theory and innovation? As Alderman Lawrence shrewdly
remarked the other day, from his place in the Guildhall, the sanitary
reform cry is "got up." That is the reason why, in his case, it does not
go down. He, for his own part, did not disapprove the flavor of a
church-yard, and appeared to see no reason why it should be cheated of its
due. The sanitary partisans, he said, were paid for making certain
statements. It would be well if we could cut off their supply of
halfpence, and so silence them. Liwang, an ancient Emperor of China,
fearing insurrection, forbade all conversation, even whispering, in his
dominions. It would be well for us if Liwang lived now as our Secretary
for the Home Department. There is too much talking--is there not, Mr.
Carlyle? We want Liwang among us. However, as matters stand, it is bad
enough for the sanitary reformers. "They drop their arms and tremble when
they hear," they are despised by Alderman Lawrence.(3)

Let us uphold our city grave-yards; on that point we have already spoken
out. Let us not cheat them of their pasturage; if any man fall sick, when,
so to speak, his grave is dug, let us not lift him out of it by
misdirected care. That topic now engages our attention.

There is a report among the hear-say stories of Herodotus, touching some
tribe of Scythians, that when one of them gets out of health, or passes
forty years of age, his friends proceed to slaughter him, lest he become
diseased, tough, or unfit for table. These people took their ancestors
into their stomachs, we take ours into our lungs--and herein we adopt the
better plan, because it is the more unwholesome. We are content, also, now
and then to let our friends grow old, although we may repress the tendency
to age as much as possible. We do not absolutely kill our neighbors when
they sicken; yet by judicious nursing we may frequently keep down a too
great buoyancy of health, and check recovery. How to produce this last
effect I will now tell you. Gentle mourners, do not chide me as
irreverent--

"Auch ich war in Arkadien geboren