CHAPTER X.

» . •

Good night, good Doctor.

Macbctk.

It were not well to hasten through my life at Cumana, without devoting one little chapter to the man, to whom, above all others, I was certainly indebted for my happiness with Beatriz,—I mean Harry Smith, "quo nos medico amicoque usi sumus."

Notwithstanding his aversion, affected or real, from the society of the softer sex, the Doctor honoured my nuptials with hitf portly presence.—I had never seen him in better spirits; but, towards the close of the evening, just before he took his leave, he approached me with a strange solemnity of manner, and requested a few minutes' private conversation. I withdrew with him to another room.

"So, Jeremy, yen are indeed married?" said the Doctor, with a most rueful visage, and holding both my hands in both his own.

"Certainly; I trust I am. Don't you wish me joy, Harry?"

"Joy? Hum! I would,—heartily,—if you had buried a wife; I wont, as you have married one. • • Tuvouxa Sa#TSiv xgiTaaw IffViv if yaf/.eiv."

"Tenderly cooed, most mournful widower! Why, man, have your eyes shrunk into the bottomless pit of your stomach, that you cannot see there's as great pleasure in marrying such a girl as Beatriz as in burying such a giantess as Susan? Susan,— a cow.girl of Brobdignag! Beatriz,— an angel!"

"Angel! 'Gad, Jerry, if you give her wings, she may return the favour by presenting you with horns,— and then what a couple of beasts you will have made of yourselves! Faith, you may have a race of children equal to the fabulous griffins !—But don't look so grave, man,— your wife is an angel, if you so like her to be,— and as handsome a one, by my soul, as Mohammed ever put into his Paradise; but you know what the Severians, and followers of Andronicus say— "Mulierem supra opus Dei, infra autem ab umbilico diaboli."*

"Rail on,— I see how it is with you, Smith,— you harnessed yourself abreast with a raw country-wench, as ugly as an Ogress, and in temper like the devil, or Xantippe, (which is much the same,)— and now, you are jealous of my happiness, because I am linked with a fine, - sensible, heroic girl, as beautiful as a Houri, and who loves me to distraction."

"Heroic, egad! You'll find, soon, that a woman can't have heroism without being something of the Amazon: and as for your beauty, and love! wait a few months, my Adonis,— the fire that burns so fiercely must soon come to ashes, and then your furnace is likely to go to some other hearth to be replenished. Take care of that beauty, Jerry. You have already been a scabbard for it; yesterday, for the same bauble, you thought you should swing like a sign, between two posts; in the next elegant transformation, we shall have you butting uke > ram.— O! a woman is the devil any way If

pulchram duxeris, habebis xoiv»]v:" and hum! —' Sl

deformen, habebis #oiv»)v."

"Come, come, Smith,— this is going too far.— *>u' no matter, you are privileged. No one that knows y

;an expect any thing decent out of your mouth. And as or the modesty which might teach you to conceal your houghts, any one that sees you will >wear you want it,-*— .our face is too red to blush, and, if you wished to hide ronrself, your belly wouldn't let you."

"Bravo, Jerry! you take a joke the right way. O, rou'll make a passive husband! Here, dear,—place them lere,—right On the forehead, love. Ha, ha, ha!"

"Well, Smith, you have had your jest; I must leave pou, How."

"No, no, Levis,—not so soon. I have not told you yet lalf the good things I know of matrimony."

"But you forget, it will not do to leave the company so ong. That soul of etiquette, my upright father-in-law, would never forgive me such a breach of politeness.— Come, Smith, you must excuse me. I am just married, remember,— and a young wife, in spite of your jests, is )etter company than an old friend."

"And it is because you are just married that I have Fou here. No, no, you shall not leave me till I have reached my sermon,—which I mean you to repeat o yourself, to-night, by way of curtain-lecture,—the . inly soliloquy of the kind you are likely henceforth to ave,— until you are a widower; for we all know on rhich side of the bed curtain.lecture's originate."

It was in vain I tried to escape. The Doctor thrust, ar rather, forced) his huge fingers through the buttonoles of my coat, and held me before him, till he had run irough a satire on the sex, a thousand times more abusive lan the 6th of Juvenal, and scarcely more decent,—

id embellished with innumerable quotations from authors

had never before heard of;* for the Doctor was blessed

with a memory of high-pressure power, and a library, on whose shelves the modern volumes figured among the vellum-covered tomes, something as the planets do among the fixed stars, or a ruby in its setting,— I mean, in number and appearance, not in value.

When, however, 1 was permanently settled as a mar. ried man,—that is to say, when the ceremonies of visits, &c. &c. &c. (no trifling matters in Cumana—) were over, and I sat on my own sofa, in my own house, with my own, dear little Beatriz, the happy mistress of it and me,—the misogamist seemed to change his sentiments. Almost every day he passed an hour or two with me and my bride, towards whom he manifested an affection like that of an elder brother for a favourite sister,—a warmth of feeling, that surprised as well as pleased me, since, till then, I had never known the doctor to evince the least fondness for any thing but good eating and good reading.—Once, when I rallied him tin this phenomenon, he gaily answered, "Ah, ha, Jerry! Falstaff after Mistress Ford? What did I tell you about handsome wives'! 'Si pulchram duxeris 'Beware, my Pan! they are

growing.

- . . And felt for budding borns on his smooth forehead rear' J."

;' Psha, my dear Doctor! what would set Cupid to groping for a heart in that great meat-cask of thine?" (touching delicately, with the tip of my index finger, the

umbilical button of his nether integuments.) "Why,

the very fact that he would more easily find it there than in that little tea-urn of thine. Dost think, dolt, that this protuberance of the lower man is caused by the stomach and its jpurneymen intestines! The heart, the heart's in fault! During the life-time of my lamented Susan, the organ was subject to such daily enlargement, that it got into a habit of swelling, which, continuing to the present time, has produced the appearance you see,—and, heigho! it will never cease, I fear, but with my life.—Jeremy, my friend," (concluded the fat leech, while he took my hand, and his ruddy countenance assumed a look such as Comedy might wear, if she attempted to ape the manners of her melancholy sister,)—" your poor Harry was doomed, even in his mother's womb, to die of fungus amatoriits."—To Beatriz, Smith was always a pleasant companion, and she would laugh at his jokes till actually obliged, in very weakness, to beg him to desist. These jokes, assuredly were not always of the most delicate kind; but then Beatriz was a Spanish girl, and excused the high seasoning for the sake of the dish,—perhaps, only liked the latter the better on that account,—for when women are married their tastes do alter wonderfully.

This intimacy continued for about five months, when the jolly M. D. began to make his visits less frequent, and, when made, to curtail them of what, from custom, had become their just limits. Yet did not the doctor show himself the less facetious; but, always good-humoured, he came laughing and laughable, and went away as he