BEHOLD THE STRONG MAN IN THE FEVERISH 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 plates and knives and spoons, and, worse, the sickening smell of victuals.  How can they laugh and joke when he, a man and a brother, lies sick of a fever?  Ah! my friend, it would not be so were you the head of the house.  All would be changed.  The supper-hour would come with a hush instead of a clatter.  The light stol’n forth o’ the building would leave the whole house in gloom.  And in your selfish soul you would be glad, for God so made all of us!  Now you turn yourself to the wall, and marvel at the lightness of human words and