ed,
for she was escorted by Doctor Plausible, the surgeon of the ship. And
now I must again digress while I introduce that gentleman. I never
shall get that poor girl from the cuddy-door.

Doctor Plausible had been summoned to prescribe for Miss Laura Revel,
who suffered extremely from the motion of the vessel, and the remedies
which she had applied to relieve her uneasiness. Miss Laura Revel had
been told by somebody, previous to her embarkation, that the most
effectual remedy for sea-sickness was gingerbread. In pursuance of the
advice received, she had provided herself with ten or twelve squares of
this commodity, about one foot by eighteen inches, which squares she had
commenced upon as soon as she came on board, and had never ceased to
swallow, notwithstanding various interruptions. The more did her
stomach reject it, the more did she force it down, until, what, with
deglutition, _et vice versa_, she had been reduced to a state of extreme
weakness, attended with fever.

How many panaceas have been offered without success for two evils--
sea-sickness and hydrophobia! and between these two there appears to be
a link, for sea-sickness as surely ends in hydrophobia, as hydrophobia
does in death. The sovereign remedy prescribed, when I first went to
sea, was a piece of fat pork, tied to a string to be swallowed, and then
pulled up again; the dose to be repeated until effective. I should not
have mentioned this well-known remedy, as it has long been superseded by
other nostrums, were it not that this maritime prescription has been the
origin of two modern improvements in the medical catalogue--one is the
stomach pump, evidently borrowed from this simple engine; the other is
the very successful prescription now in vogue, to those who are weak in
the digestive organs, to eat fat bacon for breakfast, which I have no
doubt was suggested to Doctor Vance, from what he had been eye-witness
to on board of a man-of-war.

But here I am digressing again from Doctor Plausible to Dr Vance.
Reader, I never lose the opportunity of drawing a moral; and what an
important one is here! Observe how difficult it is to regain the right
path when once you have quitted it. Let my error be a warning to you in
your journey through life, and my digressions preserve you from
diverging from the beaten track, which, as the Americans would say,
leads _clean slick_ on to happiness and peace.

Doctor Plausible was a personable man, apparent