After such casual respites (which frequently happen) when the progress of labour calls you again to your _chair of office_, resume the language of commiseration, giving your patient every alleviation of hope for a speedy deliverance, at the very time you are impressing (by significant looks and emphatic gestures) the attendants and friends with an idea of great difficulty and impending danger. In the alternate moments of respiration, evade every retrospective allusion to the length of the labour, by frequent insinuations that it advances rapidly, that you have great reason to hope every obstacle will be soon surmounted; but you are afraid the consolation you administer, and the pain she suffers, will take but little hold of the memory, if you may be permitted to judge from the declaration of a very pretty woman you delivered during your attendance at the Lying-in Hospital, who, in reply to your tender admonitions of fortitude and patience, said, “She was very much obliged to you for your kindness, but she was very certain it would be just the same again by _that time twelvemonth_.”—This will make way for any thing applicable of your own collection, but they must be all bordering upon the original cause of the scene before you; for although the patient is in extreme pain, it is not so with the attendants; they consider it a _matter of course_, and feel no disgust but from fatigue, which they very justly conceive they have a right to alleviate with occasional mirth—tea, and a _little good brandy_. To the _nurse_, great part of your attention must be directed; for she, like a bellows blower to the organist at a cathedral, will expect to be included and constitute _WE_ in all the merit of your execution.—The rapidity, or gradual progress of labour, at length closes your complicated scene of mirth and anxiety; you deliver your patient, and proceed to the subsequencies (_secundem artem_) all which having concluded to general admiration, and received ten thousand thanks and blessings from your subject, you convey a pecuniary _hope_ for future services into the hand of the _nurse_, take a tender leave of your patient, with a promise of seeing her again in proper time, drop an attracting _nod_ of obedience to the surrounding females, and meeting the husband at the bottom of the stairs, congratulate him upon his son or his daughter; slightly hint the difficulty of the case, the danger you apprehended, the fatigue you had undergone, all which is not worthy a thought, _perfectly happy_ in an event that contributes so largely to the happiness of him and his family.