how Mrs. Cotton cured her lumbago. (I am still
hunting rheumatic affections, yes, and always shall
be.) She took a quart of rum, my Christian friend;
she put into it a pound and a half of sulphur and
three-quarters of a pound of cream tartar, and took
'a good swaller' three or four times a day. There's
therapeutics for you, sir! Lady weighs three hundred
pounds if she does an ounce, and has a colour
like a baby's. Well, I could go on indefinitely.
That's in the first place. In the second, I have
here in this house society that is absolutely to my
mind. Experience is life, you grant that. Therefore,
the person of experience is the person who
really lives. (Of course I admit exceptions.) Therefore,
the society of a woman of sixty--an intelligent
woman--is infinitely more to be desired than that
of a callow girl with nothing but eyes and theories.
It is profitable, it is delightful; and this with no
hurrying of the heart, no upsetting of the nerves,
none of the deplorable symptoms that I observe
annually in my friend Mr. James Swift. That for
the second place. There is a third. Jim, Jim, do
you forget that I was brought up with 'six female
cousins, and all of them girls?' They were virtuous
young women, every one of them; one or two were
good looking; four of them (including the plainest),
have married, and I trust their husbands find them
interesting. I did not, but I 'learned about women
from them,' as the lynx-eyed schoolboy does learn.
I divided them into three classes, sugary, vinegary,