THE SICK BACHELOR.
Here I am, a doomed man—booked for a fever, in this gloomy room, up four flights of stairs; nothing to look at but one table, two chairs, and a cobweb; pulse racing like a locomotive; head throbbing as if it were hooped with iron; mouth as parched as Ishmael’s in the desert; not a bell-rope within reach; sun pouring in through those uncurtained windows, hot enough to singe off my eye-lashes; all my confidential letters lying loose on the table, and I couldn’t get up to them if you held one of Colt’s revolvers to my head. All my masculine friends(?) are parading Broadway, I suppose; peeping under the pretty girls’ bonnets, or drinking “sherry-cobblers.” A sherry-cobbler! Bacchus! what a luxury! I believe Satan suggested the thought to me.
Heigh-ho! I suppose the Doctor (whom they have sent for) will come before long; some great, pompous Æsculapius, with an owl phiz, a gold-headed cane, an oracular voice, and callous heart and hands; who will first manipulate my wrist, and then take the latitude and longitude of my tongue; then he will punch me in my ribs, and torment me with more questions than there are in the Assembly’s Catechism; then he’ll bother me for writing materials, to scratch off a hieroglyphic humbug prescription, ordering five times as much medicine as I need; then I shall have to pay for it; then, ten to one, the apothecary’s boy will put up poison, by mistake! Cæsar! how my head spins round; Hippodrome racing is nothing to it.
Hist! there’s the Doctor. No! it is that little unregenerate cub, my landlady’s pet boy, with a bran new drum (as I’m a sinner), upon which he is beating a crucifying tattoo. If I only had a boot-jack to throw at him! No! that won’t do: his mother wouldn’t make mygruel. I’ll bribe him with a sixpence, to keep the peace. The little embryo Jew! he sayshe won’t do it under a quarter! Twitted by a little pinafore!I, Tom Haliday, six feet in my stockings! I shall go frantic.
“Doctor is coming!” Well, let him come. I’m as savage as if I’d just dined off a cold missionary. I’ll pretend to be asleep, and let old Pillbox experiment.
How gently he treads—how soft his hand is—how cool and delicious his touch! How tenderly he parts my hair over my throbbing temples! His magnetic touch thrills every drop of blood in my veins: it is marvellous how soothing it is. I feel as happy as a humming-bird in a lily cup, drowsy with honey-dew. Now he’s moved away. I hear him writing a prescription. I’ll just take a peep and see what he looks like. Cæsar Aggripina! if it isn’t afemale physician! dainty as a Peri—and my beard three days old! What a bust! (Wonder how my hair looks?) What a foot and ankle! What shoulders; what a little round waist. Fever? I’ve gottwentyfevers, and the heart-complaint besides. What the mischief sent that little witch here? She will either kill or cure me, pretty quick.
Wonder if she has any moremasculinepatients? Wonder if they are handsome? Wonder if she lays that little dimpled hand ontheirforeheads, as she did on mine? Now she has done writing, I’ll shut my eyes and groan, and then, may be, she willpetme some more; bless her little soul!
She says, “poor fellow!” as she holds my wrist, “his pulse is too quick.” In the name of Cupid, what does sheexpect? She says, as she pats my forehead with her little plump fingers, “’Sh—sh! Keep cool.” Lava and brimstone! does she take me for an iceberg?
Oh, Cupid! of all your devices, this feminine doctoring for a bachelor is thene plus ultraof witchcraft. If I don’t have a prolonged “run of fever,” my name is n’t Tom Haliday!
She’s gone! and—I’m gone, too!