Gout. It is I, even I, the Gout. Franklin. What! my enemy in person? Gout. No, not your enemy. Franklin. I repeat it - my enemy; for you would not only torment my body to death, but ruin my good name; you reproach me as a glutton and a tippler; now all the world; that knows me, will allow that I am neither the one nor the other. Gout. The world may think as it pleases; it is always very complaisant to itself and sometimes to its friends; but I very well know that the quantity of meat and drink proper for a man who takes a reasonable degree of exercise would be too much for another who never takes any. eh! Franklin. I take eh! oh!-as much exercise as I can, Madam Gout. You know my sedentary state, and on that account it would seem, Madam Gout, as if you might spare me a little, seeing it is not altogether my own fault. Gout. Not a jot; your rhetoric and your politeness are thrown away; your apology avails nothing. If your situation in life is a sedentary one, your amusements, your recreations, at least, should be active. You ought to walk or ride, or if the weather prevents that, play at billiards. But let us examine your course of life. While the mornings are long and you have leisure to go abroad, what do you do? Why, instead of gaining an appetite for breakfast by salutary exercise, you amuse yourself with books, pamphlets, or newspapers which commonly are not worth the reading. Yet you eat an inordinate breakfast four dishes of tea, with cream, and one or two buttered toasts, with slices of hung beef, which, I fancy, are not things the most easily digested. Immediately afterward you sit down to write at your desk or converse with persons who apply to you on business. Thus the time passes till one without any kind of bodily exercise. But all this I could pardon, in regard, as you say, to your sedentary condition. But what is your practice after dinner? Walking in the beautiful gardens of those friends with whom you have dined would be the choice of a man of sense; yours is to be fixed down to chess, where you are found engaged for two or three hours! This is your perpetual recreation, which is the least eligible of any for a sedentary man, because, instead of accelerating the motion of the fluids, the rigid attention it requires helps to retard the circulation and obstruct internal secretions. Wrapped in the speculations of this wretched game, you destroy your constitution. What can be expected from such a course of living but a body replete with stagnant humors, ready to fall a prey to all kinds of dangerous maladies, if I, the Gout, did not occasionally bring you relief by agitating those humors and so purifying or dissipating them? If it was in some nook or alley in Paris, deprived of walks, that you played awhile at chess after dinner, this might be excusable; but the same taste prevails with you in Passy, Auteuil, Montmartre, or Savoy places where there are the finest gardens and walks, a pure air, beautiful women, and most agreeable and instructive conversation; all of which you might enjoy by frequenting the walks. But these are rejected for this abominable game of chess. Fie, then, Mr. Franklin! But amid my instructions I had almost forgot to administer my wholesome corrections; so take that twinge and that! Franklin. Oh! eh! oh! oh-h-h! As much instruction as you please, Madam Gout, and as many reproaches; but pray, madam, a truce with your corrections! Gout. No, sir, no. I will not abate a particle of what is so much for your good; therefore Franklin. Oh! eh-h-h! It is not fair to say I take no exer cise, when I do very often, going out to dine and returning i my carriage. Gout. That, of all imaginable exercises, is the most slight and insignificant, if you allude to the motion of a carriage sus pended on springs. By observing the degree of heat obtained by different kinds of motion, we may form an estimate of the quantity of exercise given by each. Thus, for example, if you turn out to walk in winter with cold feet, in an hour's time you will be in a glow all over; ride on horseback, the same effect will scarcely be perceived by four hours' round trotting; but if you loll in a carriage, such as you have mentioned, you may travel all day, and gladly enter the last inn to warm your feet by the fire. Flatter yourself, then, no longer that half an hour's airing in your carriage deserves the name of exercise. Providence has appointed few to roll in carriages, while he has given to all a pair of legs, which are machines infinitely more commodious and serviceable. Be grateful, then, and make a proper use of yours. Would you know how they forward the circulation of your fluids in the very action of transporting you from place to place, observe, when you walk, that all your weight is alternately thrown from one leg to the other; this occasions a great pressure on the vessels of the foot and repels their contents; when relieved, by the weight of being thrown on the other foot, the vessels of the first are allowed to replenish, and by a return of this weight this repulsion again succeeds thus accelerating the circulation of the blood. The heat produced in any given time depends on the degree of this acceleration; the fluids are shaken, the humors alternated, the secretions facilitated, and all goes well; the cheeks are ruddy and health is established. Behold your fair friend at Auteuil, a lady who received from bounteous nature more really useful science than half a dozen such pretenders to philosophy as you have been able to extract from all your books. When she honors you with a visit it is on foot. She walks all hours of the day and leaves indolence and its concomitant maladies to be endured by her horses. In this see at once the preservative of her health and personal charms. But when you go to Auteuil you must have your carriage, though it is no further from Passy to Auteuil than from Auteuil to Passy. Gout. Burn it if you choose: you would at least get heat out of it once in this way; or, if you dislike that proposal, here's another for you: observe the poor peasants who work in the vineyards and grounds about the villages of Passy, Auteuil, Chaillot, etc.; you may find every day among these deserving creatures four or five old men and women, bent and perhaps crippled by weight of years and too long and too great labor. After a most fatiguing day these people have to trudge a mile or two to their smoky huts. Order your coachman to set them down. This is an act that will be good for your soul; and at the same time after your visit to the Brillons, if you return on foot, that will be good for your body. Franklin. Ah! how tiresome you are! Gout. Well, then, to my office; it should not be forgotten that I am your physician. There! Franklin. Oh-h-h! What a devil of a physician! Gout. How ungrateful you are to say so! Is it not I who, in the character of your physician, have saved you from the palsy, dropsy, and apoplexy? one or other of which would have done for you long ago but for me. Franklin. I submit and thank you for the past, but entreat the discontinuance of your visits for the future; for in my mind one had better die than be cured so dolefully. Permit me just to hint that I have also not been unfriendly to you. I never feed physician or quack of any kind to enter the list against you; if, then, you do not leave me to my repose, it may be said you are ungrateful too Gout. I can scarcely acknowledge that as an objection. As to quacks, I despise them; they may kill you indeed, but cannot injure me. And as to regular physicians, they are at last convinced that the gout, in such a subject as you are, is no disease, but a remedy; and wherefore cure a remedy? But to our business; there! Franklin. Oh! oh! for heaven's sake leave me, and I prom below. You have been in the practice of visiting this amiable family twice a week after dinner, and it is a maxim of your own that "a man may take as much exercise in walking a mile, up and down stairs, as in ten on level ground." What an opportunity was here for you to have had exercise in both these ways! Did you embrace it, and how often? Franklin. I cannot immediately answer that question. Franklin. Not once? Gout. Even so. During the summer you went there at six o'clock. You found the charming lady, with her lovely children and friends, eager to walk with you and entertain you with their agreeable conversation; and what has been your choice? Why, to sit on the terrace, satisfy yourself with the fine prospect, and passing your eye over the beauties of the garden below, without taking one step to descend and walk about in them. On the contrary, you call for tea and the chess-board; and lo! you are occupied in your seat till nine o'clock, and that besides two hours' play after dinner; and then, instead of walking home, which would have bestirred you a little, you step into your carriage. How absurd to suppose that all this carelessness can be reconcilable with health without my interposition! Franklin. I am convinced now of the justness of Poor Richard's remark that " our debts and our sins are always greater than we think for." Gout. So it is. You philosophers are sages in your maxims and fools in your conduct. Franklin. But do you charge among my crimes that I return in a carriage from M. Brillon's? Gout. Certainly; for having been seated all the while, you cannot object the fatigue of the day, and cannot want, therefore, the relief of a carriage. Franklin. What, then, would you have me do with my carriage: |