"Certainly not," rejoined the doctor with an acquiescent bow. "I look to your influence, my dear madam, to encourage our patient to follow my directions. It is unnecessary to repeat them, they are so extremely simple and easy to carry out. I will answer for your husband's recovery if he will but remember that he has now only two objects in life--to keep quiet, and to do Nothing." My wife is a woman of business habits. As soon as the doctor had taken his leave, she produced her pocket-book, and made a brief abstract of his directions, for our future guidance. I looked over her shoulder and observed that the entry ran thus:-- "Rules for dear William's restoration to health. No reading; no writing; no excitement; no annoyance; no anxiety; no thinking. Tonic. No elation of spirits. Nice dinners. No depression of spirits. Dear William to take little walks (with me). To go to bed early. To get up early. N.B.--Keep him quiet. Mem.: Mind he does Nothing." Mind I do Nothing? No need to mind about that. I have not had a holiday since I was a boy. Oh, blessed Idleness, after the years of merciless industry that have separated us, are you and I to be brought together again at last? Oh, my weary right hand, are you really to ache no longer with driving the ceaseless pen? May I, indeed, put you in my pocket, and let you rest there, indolently, for hours together? Yes! for I am now at last to begin--doing Nothing. Delightful task that performs itself! Welcome responsibility that carries its weight away smoothly on its own shoulders! These thoughts shine in pleasantly on my mind after the doctor has taken his departure, and diffuse an easy gaiety over my spirits when my wife and I set forth, the next day, for the country. We are not going the round of the noisy watering-places, nor is it our intention to accept any invitations to join the circles assembled by festive country friends. My wife, guided solely by the abstract of the doctor's directions in her pocket-book, has decided that the only way to keep me absolutely quiet, and to make sure of my doing Nothing, is to take me to some pretty retired village and to put me up at a little primitive, unsophisticated country-inn. I offer no objection to this project--not because I have no will of my own and am not master of all my movements--but only because I happen to agree with my wife. Considering what a very independent man I am naturally, it has sometimes struck me, as a rather remarkable circumstance, that I always do agree with her.