and I am tempted to aid in eating it up, the highly seasoned
food among the rest."

"And you think, do you, that this highly seasoned food is the cause of
your dyspepsia?"

"Undoubtedly it is."

"And do you expect to be cured of a disease which is produced by certain
definable causes, like this, and yet be permitted to go on in the same
way you have long gone? Do you suppose I have any power to grant you an
immunity from the evil effects of high living while that high living is
persisted in? Can you get rid of an effect till you first remove the
cause?"

"Why, no, sir, not exactly. Such an expectation would be very
unreasonable. But is there no medicine I can take that will _partially_
restore me? Perhaps, at my age, entire restoration from such a hydra
disease as dyspepsia is hardly to be expected; but can you not patch me
up in part?"

"What! and suffer you to go on sinning?"

"Why, yes, to some small extent. It is very hard, nay, it seems to me
almost impossible, to break away from the routine of my family, at least
as long as Mrs. Y. is fully determined to prepare for company according
to the prevailing customs. I could submit to a different arrangement if
she were ready for it."

"I wish I could encourage you to pursue this compromising course of
conduct. But it is not so. You must change your habits entirely, or you
must continue to suffer. For if it were possible to patch you up, for a
short time, while your present habits are continued, it would not be as
well for you in the end: It would only add another head and horn,
perhaps several others, to the monster that annoys you. No, sir; you
must change your habits or give up the contest. There is no use in
attempting to do any thing, in such a case as yours, with medicine."

"Well, then, if it must be so, it must. I will try once more, and see
what I can do."

He left me with a downcast look, and, I suspected, with a heavy heart.
At all events, my own heart was heavy, and seemed almost ready to bleed.
Here was a father in our ministerial Israel,--one to whom multitudes
looked up for the bread of spiritual life,--who was a perfect slave to
his appetites; or, at least, to the conventionalisms of modern
house-keeping. He groaned daily and hourly under bodily disease the most
aggravated and severe. His eyes were red and swelled; the sides of his
nose enlarged and inflamed, till he had the appearance of being about
half a sot. He knew all about it, and yet