"Exhausting all _persuasive_ means to light Our fallen race to Virtue's glorious height, To Medicine gives his comprehensive mind, And fills his pockets while he cures mankind. He scorns M. D.'s, at all hard study sneers, And soon the science of its mystery clears. _His_ knowledge springs intuitive and plain, As Pallas issued from the Thunderer's brain. He takes a patent for some potent pill Whose cure is certain--for it cures to kill. Such mighty powers in its materials lurk, It grows, like Gibbon's Rome, a standard _work_! Pill-militant, he storms the forts of pain, Where grim Disease has long entrenchéd lain, Routs fevers, agues, colics, colds, and gouts, Nor ends the war till life itself he routs. If of his skill you wish some pregnant hints, Peruse the gravestones, not the public prints! To aid his work, and fame immortal win, Brings steam from physics into medicine; From speeding packets o'er th' Atlantic waste, O'er Styx's stream old Charon's boat to haste, Proving that steam for double use is fit-- To whirl men _through_ the world, and _out_ of it!" The difference in the item of sleep is amusing. I know a poor, worn-out doctor who finds all health in early rising. Let us refer him to the following, by John G. Saxe:-- EARLY RISING. "God bless the man who first invented sleep!" So Sancho Panza said, and so say I: And bless him also that he didn't keep His great discovery to himself, nor try To make it--as the lucky fellow might-- A close monopoly by patent right. Yes, bless the man who first invented sleep (I really can't avoid the iteration); But blast the man, with curses loud and deep, Whate'er the rascal's name, or age, or station, Who first invented, and went round advising, That artificial cut-off--early rising. "Rise with the lark, and with the lark to bed," Observes some solemn, sentimental owl: Maxims like these are very cheaply said; But ere you make yourself a fool or fowl, Pray, just inquire about his rise and fall, And whether larks have any beds at all. The time for honest folks to be abed Is in the morning, if I reason right; And he who cannot keep his precious head Upon his pillow till it's fairly light, And so enjoy his forty morning winks, Is up to knavery; or else--he drinks. Thomson, who sung about the "Seasons," said It was a glorious thing to _rise_ in season; But then he said it--lying--in his bed, At ten o'clock A. M.,--the very reason He wrote so charmingly. The simple fact is, His preaching wasn't sanctioned by his practice. 'Tis doubtless well to be sometimes awake,-- Awake to duty and awake to truth,-- But when, alas! a nice review we take Of our best deeds and days, we find, in sooth, The hours that leave the slightest cause to weep Are those we passed in childhood, or asleep!