a well-fought resistance in the early stages of
invalidism. Keep up the will, and if need be the temper. There are times
when to grow heavenly is fatal,--when one is to let the soul run loose,
and to gather up the gritty determination of Sarah, Duchess of
Marlborough, who, when told that she must be blistered or die,
exclaimed, "I won't be blistered, and I won't die!" Indeed, it is often
necessary to reverse the decision of the doctor who gives one up, and
simply end by giving him up. The numbers are untold who have died solely
from being given up,--I do not mean of the doctors. Poor, timid mortals!
they only heard the words, and meekly folded their hands and went. On
the other side, there is no end to the people who have been given up all
through their lives, and who have utterly refused to depart. They have a
kind of useless toughness which prevents them from dying, without
endowing them to live. These animated relics often show no special
fitness for either world, and they are not even ornamental.

I have somewhere seen the invalid enjoined to talk as if well, but treat
himself as if ill. And to certain temperaments a little of this
diplomacy, or secretiveness, is often very important. Once an admitted
invalid, and the dikes are down. Then begin to pour in all sorts of
worthy, but alarming and indiscreet persons,--they who accost one in the
street declaring one is so changed, and doesn't look fit to be
out,--they who invidiously inquire if you take any solid food, as if one
walked the world on water-gruel,--they who come to try to make you
comfortable while you _do_ live. All these are very kind, but to a
sanguine person they are crushing.

We are all aware that there is no surer way to produce a given state of
mind or body, than to constantly address the victim as if he were in
that state. It is a familiar fact that a stout yeoman once went home
pale and discomfited from a little conspiracy of several wags remarking
how very ill he looked; and that another, who was blindfolded, having
water poured over his arm as if being bled, finally died from loss of
blood without losing a drop; and Sir Humphrey Davy mentions one wishing
to take nitrous oxide gas, to whom common atmospheric air was given,
with the result of syncope. And if the well can be thus wrought on, what
can be expected of the weak? This habit of depressing remark comes
possibly from the feeling that invalids like to magnify their woes,
ailments being rega