What a busy, anxious, fidgety creature Ned Worrell was? That iron frame supported all the business of all society! Every man who wanted any thing done, asked Ned Worrell to do it. And do it Ned Worrell did! You remember how feelingly he was wont to sigh,--"Upon my life I'm a perfect slave." But now Ned Worrell has snapped his chain; obstinate dyspepsia, and a prolonged nervous debility, have delivered him from the carks and cares of less privileged mortals. Not Ariel under the bough is more exempt from humanity than Edward Worrell. He is enjoined to be kept in a state of perfect repose, free from agitation, and hermetically shut out from grief. His wife pays his bills, and he is only permitted to see his banker's accounts when the balance in his favor is more than usually cheerful. His eldest daughter, an intelligent young lady, reads his letters, and only presents to him those which are calculated to make a pleasing impression. Call now on your old friend, on a question of life and death, to ask his advice, or request his interference--you may as well call on King Cheops under the Great Pyramid. The whole houseguard of tender females block the way. "Mr. Worrell is not to be disturbed on any matter of business whatever," they will tell you. "But, my dear ma'am, he is trusted to my marriage settlement; his signature is necessary to a transfer of my wife's fortune from those cursed railway shares. To-morrow they will be down at zero. We shall be ruined!" "Mr. Worrell is in a sad, nervous way, and can't be disturbed, sir." And the door is shut in your face! It was after some such occurrence that I took into earnest consideration a certain sentiment of Plato's, which I own I had till then considered very inhuman; for that philosopher is far from being the tender and sensitive gentleman generally believed in by lovers and young ladies. Plato, in his "Republic," blames Herodicus (one of the teachers of that great doctor Hippocrates) for showing to delicate, sickly persons, the means whereby to prolong their valetudinary existence, as Herodicus himself (naturally a very rickety fellow) had contrived to do. Plato accuses this physician of having thereby inflicted a malignant and wanton injury on those poor persons;--nay, not only an injury on them, but on all society. "For," argues this stern, broad-shouldered Athenian, "how can people be virtuous who are always thinking of their own infirmities?" And therefore he opines, that if a sickly person cannot wholly recover health and become robust, the sooner he dies the better for himself and others! The wretch, too, might be base enough to marry, and have children as ailing as their father, and so injure, _in perpetuo_, the whole human race. Away with him!