Love-Making

THE WAY OF THE M. D.

'ELL, Angelina, this is most absurd.

The way I feel, it is upon my word;

Of course his own disease you would suppose
An Esculapius could diagnose.

But now the fact is this, I can't locate

This pain of mine, whether 'tis in my pate,

Or in my heart, my liver or my lung.

Sometimes it seems in all, and too, my tongue

Is subject to a paralytic stroke:—

You laugh, my dear, but really 'tis no joke,
For when I'd broach a subject unto you,-
One old as time, but somehow ever new,
The icicle that shivers in December,
Is not more chill than this unruly member.
At fever point sometimes my pulses beat,
Again 'tis low as zero, Fahrenheit,
And so erratic is my respiration
I fear 'twill prove its own annihilation.
In strength and appetite I could compete
Once, with the great Crotonian athlete,
But now my muscles, all, are lax, undone,
And all my gastric provinder is gone;
I've dosed myself with potion after potion,
I've plunged myself in lotion after lotion,
But there's no pill, no powder, lotion, plaster,

Can mitigate this coming dire disaster.

Yet sometimes I do look for convalesence,

And hope beams nigh, 'till once more in your presence,

Then ruin rampant threatens dissolution,

And heart and brain is a crazy convolution,

What shall I do my love, what shall I do?

You see I am splenetic--awful blue,

And there's a remedy, or I 'm undone;

SIMILIA SIMILIBUS, SO on;

What think you of it? you 're the cause, you know,

So let your healing virtues to me flow;

Unless you do, I care not now to say

What may become of me some gloomy day;

Perhaps you'll find at an unlucky hour,

My poor DISJECTA MEMBRA at your door.

-REBECCA MORROW REAVES.

The Good Physician

"Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch."-Milton.

TORMS are remembered when the voyage is

o'er,

But not the breeze that wafted us ashore.

If this once busy being were of those
Whom Fame forgets, it mars not his repose:
He never sought, in life's industrious ways,

A large return, or loud or lasting praise;
But to the sacred task which Heaven assigned,

In pain's hushed chamber, gave his strength and mind,
Believing so he served his Maker best,

Trusting the Great Physician for the rest.

We write his name on this pretenceless stone,

To point his pillow to his friends alone;

Nor would we vex his spirit to record

How much he did, how little his reward:

Yet all he asked he had; and had he more,

He would have given the whole to bless the poor.
-THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS.

P'raps, though, it was HER head
And wore a bonnet.

Maybe the vanished guest
Was poor, despised, distressed;
Or perchance he possessed
Mansions and villas.
Speak, oh, attendant wight,
Is this description right?
"Can't say it is, sir, quite,
That's a gorilla's."

STUART CAMERON.

My Uniformed Nurse

風

SWEETLY winsome face,
Ripe lips and merry eyes
Where tender pity lies;

Brown hair beneath a cap of lace

To keep the wayward locks in place.

A fichu neat and plain

Crossed on her bosom white;
Her heart beneath is light,
But throbs in sympathy with pain
And other's sorrows feels again.

Her very presence heals,

Her quiet footfalls soothe,

Her hand is soft and smooth,

And as my fevered pulse she feels

A glad thrill through my being steals.

And when, grown bold, I say,

"I love you, gentle nurse!"

She says, "I'm sure you 're worse! You must not talk, you 're worse today." And so she flings my heart away.

MYLES TYLER FRISBIE.

To a Young Physician

HE paths of pain are thine. Go forth
With healing and with hope;
The suffering of a sin-sick earth
Shall give thee ample scope.

Smite down the dragons fell and strong,
Whose breath is fever fire;

No knight of table or of song
Encountered foes more dire.

The holiest task by heaven decreed,
An errand all divine,

The burden of our mortal need

To render less is thine.

No crusade thine for cross or grave,
But for the living man.

Go forth to succor and to save
All that thy skilled hands can.

Before the unveiled mysteries

Of life and death, go stand
With guarded lips and reverent eyes
And pure of heart and hand.

So shalt thou be with power endued
For Him who went about
The Syrian hill-paths, doing good
And casting devils out.

That holy Helper liveth yet,

Thy friend and guide to be;

The Healer by Gennesaret

Shall walk the rounds with thee!

-JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.