istress undergoing the
lullaby of nicotine; going into rooms where the purest air of heaven
ought to prevail, as animated tobacco-signs.

Where is there virtue in this world that is of any practical good whose
vital force is not to be found in example rather than in precept? Who
has more need to go into the room of the sick with the purest breath,
the cleanest tongue, the brightest eyes, the purest complexion, the most
radiant countenance, and with a soul free from the bonds of ailings or
habits that offend and disable, than the physician? Where is the logic
of employing the sick to feed the sick? Is not that a sick doctor whose
nerves are so full of plaints as to need the frequent soothings only
found in a cigar, that also sears the nerves of taste? Is he not very
sick when those nerves require the stronger alcoholic?

There is contagion in good health and sound morals, when daily
illustrated, no less than in courage and fear. No physician can be at
his best in the rooms of the sick if he be under any bondage from
disease or habit.

"Physician, heal thyself!" Physician, how does it happen that you have
need to be healed, and of what worth are you if you can neither prevent
disease nor cure yourself with your dosings? What availeth it to a man
to talk righteously when virtue is not in him?

Ailings, habits blunt all the special senses and the finer instincts and
tastes, and impair the power to reason clearly, to infer correctly, to
conclude wisely. Only the well have that hopefulness that comes from
power in reserve, power that is not wasted through acquired disease and
acquired habits. The contagion of health is a power no less than courage
or fear.

That man, self-poised, void of fear, General Grant, crushed the
Rebellion with a single sentence, "I will fight it out on this line if
it takes all summer." That sentence made every man in his army a Grant
in courage and confidence. Grant in his prime could puff his cigar while
commanding all the armies of his country; but the cigar ultimately
destroyed his life, and there was no physician to interpose to prevent
one of the most torturing of deaths.

Where is the logic of the sick trying to heal the sick? This question
will be more frequently asked in that time to come when the drug-store
annex to the sick-room will be much smaller than is now thought
necessary.

Human expression is studied in the rooms of the sick as nowhere else;
and if the lines are not obscure