512 THE MOUNTAIN. 



other, and from a ''lock of hair or relic," divine every- 

 body's ills a thousand miles away. A common ghost still 

 in the mud, in the shape of an old-fashioned terrestrial doc- 

 tor, smelling loudly of assafoetida and ether, with pill-box and 

 scarificator in his pocket, makes himself extremely disgusting 

 by actually looking into his patients' mouths, at their tongues, 

 and feeling pulses, occasionally (say it softly for ears refined) 

 putting his hand on the sinner's bowels to know his ailments, 

 not forgetting a few exploratory squints at the contents 



of . This race of leeches is becoming effete, frosty, and 



fogy, too slow for Yankee go-it-while-your-young-ness, with 

 its " two-seventeen" horses, locomotives, and telegraph wires. 

 Now, a Healing Medium what a beautiful and euphonious 

 name! (which, being rendered into English in common 

 use, means a windy gasconader of the genus quack) per- 

 petrates, under this name and title, the infamous impiety 

 of attempting to don the God-mantle of Jesus the Christ, 

 and transact miracles as he would the every-day business of 

 vending cheese or patent medicines. A letter containing 

 five dollars, it seems, is the golden key, or irresistible 

 fiat for the issuing of the saving force required, of course 

 using no medicines in any case whatever, but "relying 

 on the remedies used in the days of miracles," "guided 

 by a secret though invisible intelligence." The radiant re- 

 cipient of celestial influxes gets himself, particularly herself, 

 as the sex of the vessel is a subject of indifference to spirits, 

 (the feminine gender being generally preferred however,) 

 into a state of supernatural ecstasy, a celestial furor or 

 trance, cuts short his acquaintance with the body, and its 

 five old donkey senses, floats off upon angelic wings into 

 heaven, stirs up the whole Shanghai roost of spirits, pro- 

 duces his "lock of hair or relic," demands a cure for the 

 troubled mortal who has been coloring his hair with East 

 India dye, (who has honestly sent the five dollars with a lock 

 of it,) asks a flash of lightning to amputate the cancerous 

 mass, in a dream, without suffering to the patient, or to 

 open his bowels without glyster-pipe or castor oil, simply 



