Anstruther stood but a few hundred yards apart, the old man would not cross the separating _burn_ in order to hear him. THE PLEASURES OF ILLNESS. (FROM THE PEOPLE’S JOURNAL.) Every body knows the pleasures of health; but there are very few, if any, who can appreciate those of illness. Doubtless many people will feel inclined to laugh at the suggestion, but we beg that we may not be prejudged. There is positive pleasure to be derived even from every variety—and there is a choice—of sickness, if we would only put faith in the idea, and then strive to realize it. You may smile, but we are very serious, recollecting especially that the subject is rather a painful one, for which reason it behoves us to begin by treating it philosophically. The best thing that people can do when they are suffering pain, either acute or otherwise, is—if they can not readily overcome it—to endeavor to forget it; simply because the mere effort, earnestly made and persevered in, will materially assist whatever more direct and efficient means may be adopted to get rid of it. Brooding over any bodily suffering only gives it encouragement, inasmuch as the mind is then actively assisting the ailment of the body; but let us make the most of a temporary cessation from the infliction, and there is a probability of its being dispelled altogether. Now the pleasure of getting rid of pain is undeniable, and, having achieved that, the best thing we can do to render the cessation permanent is to enjoy a sound sleep, which, though a very simple and ordinary gratification at other times, then becomes an extreme luxury, such, indeed, as we never should have known except through the instrumentality of the suffering that preceded it. The same may be said of many of the remedies that are used for the alleviation of pain: a hot bath, local applications of an exceedingly cold nature, or a delicious draught for cooling fever and quenching thirst—a draught like that of hock and soda-water—a draught “worthy of Xerxes, the great king,” and not to be equaled by sherbet “sublimed with snow;” but then you must (oh, what a pleasure for a king!) “get very drunk,” says Byron, in order thoroughly to enjoy it. You see our author so highly appreciated the pleasures of illness that he actually advises us to make ourselves ill; and that, too, in a most vulgar and degrading manner, in order that we may unreservedly revel in them. But, perhaps, the poet only meant to satirize the excessive proneness of all human beings—and kings have been noted for this quite as much as any—to bring pain upon themselves by some wanton or provoked indiscretion.