Part 4 — KINDRED QUACKS. PUNCH.

I overheard two matrons grave, allied by close affinity (The name of one was PHYSIC, and the other's was DIVINITY), As they put their groans together, both so doleful and lugubrious:

Says PHYSIC, "To unload the heart of grief, ma'am, is salubrious: Here am I, at my time of life, in this year of our deliverance; My age gives me a right to look for some esteem and reverence. But, ma'am, I feel it is too true what every body says to me,— Too many of my children are a shame and a disgrace to me."

"Ah!" says DIVINITY, "my heart can suffer with another, ma'am; I'm sure I can well understand your feelings as a mother, ma'am. I've some, as well,—no doubt but what you're perfectly aware on't, ma'am, Whose doings bring derision and discredit on their parent, ma'am."

"There are boys of mine," says PHYSIC, "ma'am, such silly fancies nourishing, As curing gout and stomach-ache by pawing and by flourishing."

"Well," says DIVINITY, "I've those that teach that Heaven's beatitudes Are to be earned by postures, genuflexions, bows, and attitudes."

"My good-for-nothing sons," says PHYSIC, "some have turned hydropathists, Some taken up with mesmerism, or joined the homoeopathists."

"Mine," says DIVINITY, "pursue a system of gimcrackery, Called Puseyism, a pack of stuff, and quite as arrant quackery."

Says PHYSIC, "Mine have sleep-walkers, pretending through the hide of you, To look, although their eyes are shut, and tell you what's inside of you."

"Ah!" says DIVINITY, "so mine, with quibbling and with caviling, Would have you, ma'am, to blind yourself, to see the road to travel in."

"Mine," PHYSIC says, "have quite renounced their good old pills and potions, ma'am, For doses of a billionth of a grain, and such wild notions, ma'am."

"So," says DIVINITY, "have mine left wholesome exhortation, ma'am, For credence-tables, reredoses, rood-lofts, and maceration, ma'am."

"But hospitals," says PHYSIC, "my misguided boys are founding, ma'am."

"Well," says DIVINITY, "of mine, the chapels are abounding, ma'am."

"Mine are trifling with diseases, ma'am," says PHYSIC, "not attacking them."

"Mine," says DIVINITY, "instead of curing souls, are quacking them."

"Ah, ma'am," says PHYSIC, "I'm to blame, I fear, for these absurdities."

"That's my fear too," DIVINITY says; "ma'am, upon my word it is."

Says PHYSIC, "Fees, not science, have been far too much my wishes, ma'am."

"Truth," says DIVINITY, "I've loved much less than loaves and fishes, ma'am."

Says each to each, "We're simpletons, or sad deceivers, some of us; And I am sure, ma'am, I don't know whatever will become of us."