I had never been sick before in my life. As John H. Higginson, my worst complaints had been only an occasional surfeit, or a moderate attack of booziness; and as Sheppard Lee, I had never known any disease except laziness, which, being chronic, I had grown so accustomed to that it never troubled me. But now, ah, _now_! my first step into the world of enjoyment was to be made on red-hot ploughshares and pokers; my first hour of a life of content was to be passed in grinning, and groaning, and--but it is hardly worth while to say it. The gout should be confined to religious people; for men of the world _will_ swear, and that roundly. For six days----six mortal days----did I lay upon my back, enduring such horrible twitches and twinges in my foot, that I was more than once on the point of ordering the doctor to cut it off; and I do not know how far that conceit might have gone, had not the heartless fellow, who, I believe, was all the while making game of my torments, assured me that the only effect of the dismemberment would be to drive the enemy into the other foot, where it would play the same tricks over again. "The gout," said he, "has as great an affection for the human body as a cat has for a house in which she has been well treated. When it once effects a lodgment, and feels itself comfortable--" "Comfortable!" said I, with a groan. "In good easy quarters--" "Don't talk to me of _easy_ quarters," said I; "for if I were hacked into quarters, and that by the clumsiest butcher in the town, I could not be more uneasy in every quarter." "I am talking," said Dr. Boneset, "not of you, but of the disease; and what I meant to say was, that when it once finds itself at home, in a good wholesome corporation of a man, there you may expect to find it a tenant for life." "For life!" said I. "I am the most wretched man in existence. Oh, Sheppard Lee! Sheppard Lee! what a fool were you to think yourself miserable!--Doctor, I shall go mad!" "Not while you have the gout," said he; "'tis a sovereign protection against all that.--But let us look at your foot." And the awkward or malicious creature managed to drop a tortoise and gold snuff-box, of about a pound and a half weight, which he was always sporting, right upon the point of my great toe, while he was looking at it. Had it been a ton and a half instead of a pound and a half in weight, it could not have thrown me into greater torture; and the--the man!--he thought he had settled the matter by making me a handsome apology! He left me to endure my pangs, and to curse Squire Higginson's father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and, in general, all his forefathers, who had entailed such susceptible great toes upon the family. In a word, I was in such a horrible quandary, that I wished the devil would fly off with my new body, as he had done before with the old. CHAPTER VI. SHEPPARD LEE'S INTRODUCTION TO HIS WIFE, AND HIS SUSPICION THAT ALL IS NOT GOLD THAT GLISTENS.