482 EXPERIENCES OF A SURGEON. 



autumn, spring, summer, and winter at Jericho, the bottomless pit, 

 or any other wishing place which happens to be uppermost in his 

 pericranium. 



Thus lives Charles Placid, growling and storming in the midst of 

 a Paradise, rendering himself hated, or laughed at by all who 

 approach him, and, with capabilities for being happy and diffusing 

 happiness, incessantly torturing; himself and inflicting uneasiness upon 

 others. His friends who know his weakness pity him, and treat him 

 like a spoiled child. We seldom leave him, without repeating to 

 ourselves Akenside's lines to Cheerfulness, 



" Thou, Cheerfulness, by Heaven design'd 

 To sway the movements of the mind ; 

 Whatever fretful passion springs, 

 Whatever wayward fortune brings, 

 To disarrange the powers within, 

 And strain the musical machine 

 Thou, Goddess, with attempering hand, 

 Doth each discordant string command ; 

 Refines the soft, and swells the strong, 

 And joining Nature's general song, 

 Through many a varying tune unfolds 

 The harmony of human souls " 



and earnestly praying the Goddess would pay him a visit, and try 

 what can be done with him though we fear his case is hopeless as 

 long and continued indulgence in bad temper is a corrosive that eats 

 away the better and more amiable part of man's attributes. 



EXPERIENCES OF A SURGEON. 



No. III. THE DEATH-BED. 



I HAD never yet seen the agonies of a death-bed, though the 

 sight of human suffering was become familiar, and had ceased to 

 excite those painful sensations which it had at first created. I had 

 sedulously avoided remaining to be a witness of the last struggles of 

 mortality. My active imagination had often dwelt upon the idea of 

 death ; the accounts I had read of the soul, and its disunion from the 

 body the change from animation to stony insensibility, mixed up 

 with other indefinite notions of the "great mystery'' the "fearful 

 thing," which operated so mighty a change as to make 



" This sensible warm motion to become 

 A kneaded clod " 



altogether had operated to render me exceedingly anxious not to 

 witness the triumph of the " King of Terrors," 



" The Death-Bed." 



