reader, “Don’t read it to me; tell it me."[4] Unconsciously he is aware that this will regulate the plunging, the reading with unequal paces, slurring over one part, instead of leaving it out altogether, if it is unimportant, and mumbling another.  If the reader lets his own attention wander, and then stops to read up to himself, or finds he has read the wrong bit, then it is all over with the poor patient’s chance of not suffering.  Very few people know how to read to the sick; very few read aloud as pleasantly even as they speak.  In reading they sing, they hesitate, they stammer, they hurry, they mumble; when in speaking they do none of these things.  Reading aloud to the sick ought always to be rather slow, and exceedingly distinct, but not mouthing—­rather monotonous, but not sing song—­rather loud but not noisy—­and, above all, not too long.  Be very sure of what your patient can bear.

[Sidenote:  Never read aloud by fits and starts to the sick.]

(2.) The extraordinary habit of reading to oneself in a sick room, and reading aloud to the patient any bits which will amuse him or more often the reader, is unaccountably thoughtless.  What do you think the patient is thinking of during your gaps of non-reading?  Do you think that he amuses himself upon what you have read for precisely the time it pleases you to go on reading to yourself, and that his attention is ready for something else at precisely the time it pleases you to begin reading again?  Whether the person thus read to be sick or well, whether he be doing nothing or doing something else while being thus read to, the self-absorption and want of observation of the person who does it, is equally difficult to understand—­although very often the read_ee_ is too amiable to say how much it hurts him.

[Sidenote:  People overhead.]

One thing more:—­From, the flimsy manner in which most modern houses are built, where every step on the stairs, and along the floors, is felt all over the house; the higher the story, the greater the vibration.  It is inconceivable how much the sick suffer by having anybody overhead.  In the solidly built old houses, which, fortunately, most hospitals are, the noise and shaking is comparatively trifling.  But it is a serious cause of suffering, in lightly built houses, and with the irritability peculiar to some diseases.  Better far put such patients at the top of the house, even with the additional fatigue of stairs, if you cannot secure the room above them being untenanted; you may otherwise bring on a state of restlessness which no opium will subdue.  Do not neglect the warning, when a patient tells you that he “Feels every step above him to cross his heart.”  Remember that every noise a patient cannot see partakes of the character of suddenness to him; and I am persuaded that patients with these peculiarly irritable nerves, are positively less injured by having persons in the same room with them than overhead, or separated by only a thin compartment.  Any sacrifice to secure silence for these cases is worth while, because no air, however good, no attendance, however careful, will do anything for such cases without quiet.