The new dominion. [volume] (Morgantown, W. Va.) 1876-1904, 1884-12-20
SITTING UP WITH THE SICK.
A Man Who Had to Hire q Professional
Nurse Whenever He or His Wife Was Ill.


MY wife tells me she was over to
your house and set up with your wife,
and gave her medicine last night, said
one solid citizen to another, as they
came down in street car one morning
this week. us she very sick' ! al
ways sit up with my wife when she is
sick. She wouldn't take medicine from
anybody else. "
''Well, my wife is not so awful sick,
but she would be if l gave her medi-
cine, answered the other. I'VE have
been married twenty years, and nine
teen years ago we made solemn agree
ment that when we were sick we would
call in the neighbors or hire nurses"
You don't say sol What was the
cause of the agreements" asked the first
speaker.
20, safety demanded it, You see,
my wife and me are too much alike.
don't suppose there are two sleeper peo-
pie in the world than we are, and when
we get to sleep it takes an hour to wake
up. The first time my wife was sick
after we were married, l sat up with
her and gave her medicine. After it got
to be bed time, | sort of camped down
on lounge, not to go to sleep, but to
rest. / got to sleep and didn't wake up
till three o'clock in the morning and as
had skipped her medicine for five hours,
l made it up by giving her five doses,
and think she always laid it up against
me. / laid down again, and went to
sleep, and in an hour or so she called
me and wanted drink of water. Did
you ever try to go into pantry and get
anything when you was asleepP My,
how sleepy / was. l took dipper,
finally, and dipped some water out of
tin pail, and carried it to her, yawning,
and she took one swallow and handed
the dipper back to me, and choked
and gagged. She said the water
tasted of soap-suds. told her she must
be crazy, and | thought she was, act
ually She insisted that l was trying
to poison her SO | could marry some one
else, and to show her she was wrong
about the water, | took swallow out
of the dipper. Well, ! hope may not
get paying office out of the President
if it wasn't soap-suds. Yah! how it did
taste. But | wanted to convince her
she was wrong, so | said the water was
all right, and she half believed it, but
she asked for some medicine to take the
taste out of her mouth. After had
given her the medicine went into the
pantry to investigate, and found that
the hired girl had placed a tin wash
dish half full of dirty water right where
we usually kept the pail Then / got
mixed in the medicines, and gave her
some liniment' that | was to rub on her
back, and in the morning she dis
charged me as a nurse, and got well.
1t was not long after that when | was
taken Sick and she sat up with me, to
give me medicine. o, but she was
sleepy. If my mouth had been as big
as the exposition building she couldn't
have found it with a spoon. | would
rise up in bed, and she would wander
up to the stand where the medicine was,
and pour out spoonful from some
bottle, darned if know which one, and
she would look like sleep-walking
scene in the opera. Then she would
hold the spoon out at arms length to
keep from spilling it on her night dress,
and meander towards the bed, and be-
gin to jab around my head with the
spoon to find my mouth. | tried to rouse
her by calling her name. but she would
yawn SO | could see away down into her
throat, and then she would take the
spoon out of my ear and try to find an
opening in the side of my head for it. l
stood it pretty well, and kept my temper,
till she got the spoon around to the back
of my neck, and when the sticky stuff
began to run down my back, and she
yawned again in a sleepy way and said:
There, that isn't bad to take. deary,
and you will now feel better, | was hot,
l tell you, and / says: Where in thun-
der are you pouring that9 What the
deuce you doing prospecting around the
side of my shirt-collar and pouring
stuff down me on the outside? 1t isn't
a spinal disorder I've got, but old ty-
.phoid fever Well, she woke up then,
and said / needn't get mad, because
there was plenty of medicine left, and
she could get me some soap-suds to
wash it down, and told her to 90 to
thunder, and laid down on my face
the rest of the night. The next morn
ing / was well enough to get on my
clothes, and we agreed that neither of
us was calculated for nurse, and we
swore off trying to keep awake. / can
set up with woman that is well,
and keep awake, but sickness makes
me sleepy. Hello! | must get off
here" and the medicine man pulled
the bell rope and jumped off the car
Peck's Sun.