strawberries, nor drink champagne cup, nor iced coffee. That is the way
with doctors. AEsculapius was originally worshipped in the form of a
serpent; in the guise of a serpent he came to Rome. Medical men still
hold of their heroic father, and physicians are the serpents in the
Paradise of a warm summer. Mortals, in their hands, are like Sancho
Panza with his medical adviser. Here is summer, provoking a gentle
interest in every method of assuaging thirst, and almost every method is
condemned by one member of the faculty or another. Champagne cannot be
so royally sound, nor is shandy-gaff so humble, that it 'scapes whipping.
How melancholy a thing is human life at best! In boyhood we can eat more
ices than our pocket-money enables us to purchase; in maturity we have
the pocket-money without the powers of digestion. The French lady said
that if strawberry ices were only sinful, no pleasure could exceed that
which is to be enjoyed in the consumption of the congealed fruit.
Strawberry ices are sinful now, and under the medical ban. The French
lady, were she living still, might be at ease on that score. But her
audacity is not given to all, and many fall back on that poor creature,
lemon-squash, when they are conscious of a thirst worthy of being
quenched by the most imperial beverages in imperial quarts.

Men, being reasonable, must hurry about town when the thermometer is at
something fabulous, wearing black clothes, going to parties, and larding
the lean earth. Beasts are not so foolish. To the pious Brahmin Vishnu
accords the power of becoming what animal he pleases, with a break in the
lease, so to speak, when circumstances alter. Had a sage this power at
this moment he would become a cow, standing up to her middle in the
clear, cool water of the Kennet, under the shade of a hanging willow
tree. What bliss can equal that of a cow thus engaged? Her life must,
indeed, be burning with a hard gem-like flame. She must be plucking the
flower of a series of exquisite moments. The rich, deep grass, with the