The Portland daily press., 1888-08-09

hear you talk such nonsense. Besides, if you
will take the trouble to calculate you will
see that my grandparents ages. if divided by
six, only produce the ridiculously insufficient
total OF some fifty years each; so that on
every ground am compelled, reluctantly, to
say no. We should have scientific varia-
ton OF the old song, my face IS my for
tune, in which the ''pretty maid would
substitute the declaration, my bilious tenn
permanent is my. fortune;" and stern parents
in; these latter days would simply decline to
allow their offspring to commit matrimony
unless they did so with due regard to the
scientific issues at stake-with certificate,
let us say, from the President of the Royal
Society, the President of the Royal College
OF Physicians, and the Esculapian Professor
in the Milwaukee University, that the match
proposed was all that could be desired as far
as the consequences to posterity were In
volvef. What tragedies there would be in
those days, what blightings of young hearts,
owing to the intermeddling of science with
nature, and OF parents and guardians with
both! "Pa," the youthful swain would con-
fess, feeling as hot and uncomfortable as
young men usually do when they make this
sort Of avowal, II want to tell you some
thing; am in love with Miss Smith. She is
very pretty and nice, and she has fortune
of five thousand year."
To which the stony hearted parent of the
future would reply: That's all very WELL
But have you considered the combined ages
and weights of her forefathers and fore
mothers, or do you recollect that poor Aunt
Mavtha-although she lived to over a hun
dred-.was. decidedly Emphatic? Money is
not the only thing to be thought of in matri-
mony, much less beauty. You, my boy, have
sanguine, highly sanguine temperament
as is seen from your ever proposing such a
match to me. But Miss Smith is nervous.
Ihat settles toe question. forbid the
banns." The despotism of science will be
substituted for the tyranny of custom, and
matrlmony will be hedged round with far
| greater difficulties than are now flung in its
| way by considerations of pounds, shillings
| and pence.
Some people are born bilious, and others
have biliousness thrust upon them through
| the enormous amount of indigestibe food
| stutfs they consume and the little exercise
| they take to counterfeit the effects. Kemble,
as we learn from Archbishop Trench, used
| and coffee, declaring that they had done
| more harm to mankind ''even than the doc
! trines of Helyetius." DR.. Richardson would
| no doubt, not agree with the celebrated ac-
tors advice to substitute Johannisberg and
| beer Tor the Eastern leaf and berry; yet
! temperance advocates should not be too sure
| that their own favorite beverages do not
| work injury to the constitution in some way
they know very little about. There is less
1 drunkenness nowadays tran formerly when
beer and spirits were consumed more large
| ly, but there is more heart disease. The sale
| OF temperance drinks has greatly increased,
but so has all the tribe of nervous ailments.
| We find the learned lecturer at the Royal
| Institution bearing his testimony to the ill
| results which follow ON any stimulation of
the action OF the heart: lin proportion to the
| unnatural tax inflicted was the reduction OF
the storage Of life, and every luxurious and
last mode OF living was shortener of the
natural term of existence" Tea and coffee
therefore, stand at once condemned; SO does
tobacco; so does alcohol. At the same time
II we are never to have our heart-beats accel-
Grated all through life, then we must never
climb hill, never leave level ground, never
| run, never ride, never do or say anything
| calculated to make life in the least degree in.
teresting or entertaining, or even useful. A
| man at manual work has his heart-beats
qulckened; but then Dr. Richardson would
probably reply that in that case, as work and
exercise are necessary, so such stimulation
of the heart is a natural and not an unnat-
ural tax on u.s. 1t is, at all events, satisfac-
tory to find that bilousness has some CON-
pensating advantages. Bilious people live
long, we are told, for which they ought to be
grateful although there are occasions on
which those who are obliged to encounter
them in daily life feel that itmight be posi-
BILE to spare them altogether. In fact, some
bilious people are nuisance to themselves
as well as to all around them, and would
hardly welcome the prospects of length of
days as any advantage. Others who are only
| moderately bilious ought to thank Dr. Rich
ardson for his comforting disclosures. They
may suffer much from bile and its attendant
train OF furies; they may be morbidly sus-
picious, ridiculous, envious, horribly boorish
and dolorously sour-visaged; but they al
least have the satisfaction of rejecting that
they are probably booked for good long in
nings of existence. the LAST word of science
seems, thereof, to be "a long life and bill
ious one, (which, taken as motto, is mo-
very hopeful; but then science only knows
| that blli0uSneSS is one of those demons thai
can be pretty we'll exercised by proper deI
and due amount of exercise.