ined!"

"Mr. Worrell is in a sad, nervous way, and can't be disturbed, sir." And
the door is shut in your face!

It was after some such occurrence that I took into earnest consideration
a certain sentiment of Plato's, which I own I had till then considered
very inhuman; for that philosopher is far from being the tender and
sensitive gentleman generally believed in by lovers and young ladies.
Plato, in his "Republic," blames Herodicus (one of the teachers of that
great doctor Hippocrates) for showing to delicate, sickly persons, the
means whereby to prolong their valetudinary existence, as Herodicus
himself (naturally a very rickety fellow) had contrived to do. Plato
accuses this physician of having thereby inflicted a malignant and
wanton injury on those poor persons;--nay, not only an injury on them,
but on all society. "For," argues this stern, broad-shouldered Athenian,
"how can people be virtuous who are always thinking of their own
infirmities?" And therefore he opines, that if a sickly person cannot
wholly recover health and become robust, the sooner he dies the better
for himself and others! The wretch, too, might be base enough to marry,
and have children as ailing as their father, and so injure, _in
perpetuo_, the whole human race. Away with him!

But, upon cool and dispassionate reflection, it seemed to me, angry as I
was with Ned Worrell, that Plato stretched the point a little too far;
and certainly, in the present state of civilization, so sweeping a
condemnation of the sickly would go far towards depopulating Europe.
Celsus, for instance, classes amongst the delicate or sickly the greater
part of the inhabitants of towns, and nearly all literary folks
(_omnesque pene cupidi literarum_). And if we thus made away with the
denizens of the towns, it would be attended with a great many
inconveniencies as to shopping, &c., be decidedly injurious to house
property, and might greatly affect the state of the funds; while,
without literary folks, we should be very dull in our healthy
country-seats, deprived of newspapers, novels, and "The Keepsake."
Wherefore, on the whole, I think Herodicus was right; and that sickly
persons should not only be permitted but encouraged to live as long as
they can.

That proposition granted, if in this attempt to show that your confirmed
Valetudinarian is not so utterly miserable as he is held to be by those
who throw physic to the dogs--and that in some points he may be a
decid