in “Figaro.”  The whole family incline in the same direction; even Laura, the elder sister,—­who is attending a course of lectures on Hygiene, and just at present sits motionless for half an hour before every meal for her stomach’s sake, and again a whole hour afterwards for her often (imaginary) infirmities,—­even Laura is a perfect Hebe in health and bloom, and saved herself and her little sister when the boat upset, last summer, at Dove Harbor,—­while the two young men who were with them had much ado to secure their own elegant persons, without rendering much aid to the girls.  And when I think, Dolorosus, of this splendid animal vigor of the race of Jones, and then call to mind the melancholy countenances of your forlorn little offspring, I really think that it would, on the whole, be unsafe to trust you with that revolver; you might be tempted to damage yourself or somebody else with it, before departing for the Rocky Mountains.

Do not think me heartless for what I say, or assume, that, because I happen to be healthy myself, I have no mercy for ill-health in others.  There are invalids who are objects of sympathy indeed, guiltless heirs of ancestral disease, or victims of parental folly or sin,—­those whose lives are early blighted by maladies that seem as causeless as they are cureless,—­or those with whom the world has dealt so cruelly that all their delicate nature is like sweet bells jangled,—­or those whose powers of life are all exhausted by unnoticed labors and unseen cares,—­or those prematurely old with duties and dangers, heroes of thought and action, whose very names evoke the passion and the pride of a hundred thousand hearts.  There is a tottering feebleness of old age, also, nobler than any prime of strength; we all know aged men who are floating on, in stately serenity, towards their last harbor, like Turner’s Old Temeraire, with quiet tides around them, and the blessed sunset bathing in loveliness all their dying day.  Let human love do its gracious work upon all these; let angelic hands of women wait upon their lightest needs, and every voice of salutation be tuned to such a sweetness as if it whispered beside a dying mother’s bed.

But you, Dolorosus,—­you, to whom God gave youth and health, and who might have kept them, the one long and the other perchance always, but who never loved them, nor reverenced them, nor cherished them, only coined them into money till they were all gone, and even the ill-gotten treasure fell from your debilitated hands,—­you, who shunned the sunshine as if it were sin, and called all innocent recreation time wasted,—­you, who staid under ground in your goldmine, like the sightless fishes of the Mammoth Cave, till you were as blind and unjoyous as they,—­what plea have you to make, what shelter to claim, except that charity which suffereth long and is kind?  We will strive not to withhold it; while there is life, there is hope.  At forty, it is said, every man is a fool or a physician.  We will wait and see which vocation you select as your own, for the broken remnant of your days.