might bear his other afflictions, could bear such tranquillity like
a hero. To say that he bore it as one would be basely to surrender
his character; for what hero ever bore a state of tranquillity
with courage? It affected his cutting out! It produced what Burton
calls "a windie melancholie," which was nothing else than an
accumulation of courage that had no means of escaping, if courage
can, without indignity, be ever said to escape. He sat uneasy on
his lap-board. Instead of cutting out soberly, he flourished his
scissors as if he were heading a faction; he wasted much chalk by
scoring his cloth in wrong places, and even caught his hot goose
without a holder. These symptoms alarmed his friends, who persuaded
him to go to a doctor. Neal went to satisfy them; but he knew that
no prescription could drive the courage out of him, that he was
too far gone in heroism to be made a coward of by apothecary stuff.
Nothing in the pharmacopoeia could physic him into a pacific state.
His disease was simply the want of an enemy, and an unaccountable
superabundance of friendship on the part of his acquaintances.
How could a doctor remedy this by a prescription? Impossible. The
doctor, indeed, recommended blood-letting; but to lose blood in a
peaceable manner was not only cowardly, but a bad cure for courage.
Neal declined it: he would lose no blood for any man until he could
not help it; which was giving the character of a hero at a single
touch. HIS blood was not to be thrown away in this manner; the
only lancet ever applied to his relations was the cudgel, and Neal
scorned to abandon the principles of his family.

His friends, finding that he reserved his blood for more heroic
purposes than dastardly phlebotomy, knew not what to do with him.
His perpetual exclamation was, as we have already stated, "I'm
blue-mowlded for want of a batin'!" They did everything in their