there is some barley-water at your bedside, delicately flavored with a little lemon juice and sugar; a sort of primitive punch, pleasant to the palate, and not at all likely to prove provocative of headache. You raise a tumblerful to your lips, and drink with intense _gusto_. What a pleasure it is! well worth coming into the world to enjoy, if one was to die the next minute; but you are not going to die yet, don’t suppose it—you are only being favored with an opportunity of enjoying the pleasures of illness. But you are so feverish, you say; so much the better. Now, just endeavor to recall to mind the wildest fiction, either in prose or poetry that you have ever read, something very pleasing and highly imaginative—a fairy tale will be as good as any. Go to sleep thinking of it, and you will dream—dream, said we? we were wrong, for the fiction will become a glorious reality; and so it does! but, alas! you awake, once more return to the vulgar commonplaces of mundane existence. A sharp rap at the bedroom door makes you farther conscious that you have only been reveling in what is termed a delusion; but never mind, here comes some one to console you—another corporeality like yourself, intent on feeding you with chicken-broth, and batter-pudding; much more substantial fare than the fairies would have given you, and extremely enjoyable now that you are ill, though at any other time you would have turned up your nose at it. Oh, it’s a fine thing is illness for teaching people not to let the palate become irritated by luxurious living! “Very nice,” eh, “but you would have liked a basin of mulligatawny better, and some wine-sauce with the pudding?” Shocking depravity! the pleasures of illness are simple, and you must learn to enjoy _them_ as well as those of health; it’s all habit. Many medicines would be found extremely palatable if we were not prejudiced against them. Now, black draughts, you “can’t bear them;” and yet they are much nicer than castor-oil. Why, what’s the matter? you’ve upset all the broth over that beautifully white counterpane! Delicate stomach, yours, very. Come, try the pudding; and don’t let your imagination combine any medicinal sauce with it. You have eaten it all; that’s right. Now, allow us to suggest that a little very ripe fruit will not hurt you—an orange, or some strawberries if in season. But you must not lie there and allow your mind to get either into a wearisome state of vacuity or unpleasant reflection. Send for a book from the library—some novel that you have never read; and if it is too much trouble to read it yourself, get some one to read it to you. It is a capital plan always to endeavor to forget an illness by means of some quiet and absorbing enjoyment. You are fond of music, for instance; and if you hear any good band strike up in the street we recommend you by all means to detain them. You will get up, perhaps, in the evening, and prepare yourself for a