Part 125 (2/2)
”My child,” said poor Mrs. Dodd sorrowfully, ”I am a poor hand at trampling; and everybody says a mother-in-law in the house bores a young gentleman sadly.”
”If a young gentleman can't live happy with you, mamma,” said he, kissing her, ”he is a little sn.o.b, that is all, and not fit to live at all. _Delenda est Cantilena!_ That means 'Down with Cant!'”
They did live together: and behold eleven French plays, with their thirty-three English adaptations, confuted to the end of time.
Creatures so high-bred as Mrs. Dodd never fidget one. There is a repose about them; they are balm to all those they love, and blister to none.
Item, no stranger could tell by Mrs. Dodd's manner whether Edward or Alfred was her own son.
Oh, you happy little villa! you were as like Paradise as any mortal dwelling can be. A day came, however, when your walls could no longer hold all the happy inmates. Julia presented Alfred with a lovely boy; enter nurses, and the villa showed symptoms of bursting. Two months more, and Alfred and his wife and boy overflowed into the next villa.
It was but twenty yards off; and there was a double reason for the migration. As often happens after a long separation Heaven bestowed on Captain and Mrs. Dodd another infant to play about their knees at present, and help them grow younger instead of older: for tender parents begin life again with their children.
The boys were nearly of a size, though the nephew was a month or two older than his uncle, a relations.h.i.+p that was early impressed on their young minds, and caused those who heard their prattle many a hearty laugh.
”Mrs. Dodd,” said a lady, ”I couldn't tell by your manner which is yours and which is your daughter's.”
”Why they are both mine,” said Mrs. Dodd piteously, and opening her eyes with gentle astonishment.
As years rolled on Dr. Sampson made many converts at home and abroad.
The foreign ones acknowledged their obligations. The leading London physicians managed more skilfully; they came into his ideas, and bit by bit reversed their whole practice, and, twenty years after, Sampson began to strengthen the invalid at once, instead of first prostrating him, and so causing either long sickness or sudden death. But, with all this, they disowned their forerunner, and still called him a quack while adopting his quackery. This dishonesty led them into difficulties.
To hide that their whole practice in medicine was reversed on _better information,_ they went from shuffle to shuffle, till at last they reached this climax of fatuity and egotism--THE TYPE OF DISEASE IS CHANGED.
Natura mutatur, non nos mutamur.
O, mutable Nature and immutable doctors!
O, unstable Omniscience, and infallible Nescience!
The former may err; the latter never--in its own opinion.
At this rate, draining the weak of their life blood was the right thing in Cervantes' day: and when he observed that it killed men like sheep, and said so under the head of Sangrado, he was confounding his own age with an age to come three hundred years later, in which coming age depletion was _going_ to be wrong.
Moliere--in las.h.i.+ng the whole scholastic system of lancet, purge, and blister as one of slaughter--committed the same error: mistook his century for one to come.
And Sampson, thirty years ago, sang the same tune, and mistook his inflammatory generation for the cool generation as yet unborn. In short, it is the characteristic of a certain blunder called genius to see things too far in advance. The surest way to avoid this is not to see them at all; but go blindly by the cant of the hour. _Race moutonuiere va!_
Sampson was indignant at finding that these gentry, after denouncing him for years as a quack, were pilfering his system, yet still reviling him.
He went in a towering pa.s.sion, and hashed them by tongue and pen: told them they were his subtractors now as well as detractors, asked them how it happened that in countries where there is no Sampson the type of disease remains unchanged, depletion is the practice, and death the result, as it was in every age?
No man, however stout, can help being deeply wounded when he sees his ideas stolen, yet their author and publisher disowned. Many men's hearts have been broken by this: but I doubt whether they were really great men.
Don't tell me Lilliput ever really kills Brobdignag. Except, of course, when Brobdignag takes medical advice of Lilliput.
Dr. Sampson had three s.h.i.+elds against subtraction, detraction, and all the wrongs inventors endure: to wit, a choleric temper, a keen sense of humour, and a good wife. He storms and rages at his detracting pupils; but ends with roars of laughter at their impudence. I am told he still hopes to meet with justice some day, and to give justice a chance, he goes to bed at ten, for, says he--
”Jinny us, jinny us, Take care of your carca.s.s,”
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