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THE

MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE.

DIALOGUE THE FIRST.

Testy and Sensitive.

Sensitive.

WELL, Mr Testy, and how are things going with you?

Testy. How!-why just as they always have gone-downwards-backwards-crookedly-spirally—any how but upwards, or straight forwards;—and, 'faith, if I may judge from the ruefulness of your visage, neighbour Sensitive, your affairs are not moving in a much better direction.

Sen. Better! O, Mr Testy! if there be any worse, you have only to suppose it for me.-But you, my friend!—you are, happily,

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of a hardy and contentious make; and, turbid as the stream of your life may occasionally be, it presently works itself clear again by its own commotion ;-while mine presents a languid, yet a fretting current, with just enough of agitation to collect a perpetual sediment, which it has not, afterwards, the strength to precipitate, or disperse !-In plainer language, Mr Testy, I strongly suspect that, if we should ever come to be dissected, you would furnish the phenomenon of an human body, in which the nerves have been omitted; while my operator would, perhaps, discover little else. I have a strange curiosity upon this subject-could I venture to propose, dear Sir, for the good of mankind, that we should draw up a sort of codicil to our wills, so as just to leave ourselves to Mr Cline, to be.....

Tes.-Carved and served up to his pupils, I suppose!-thank ye, Sir-infinitely obliged to you, upon my life, for so readily letting me into your benevolent scheme-though I can't say, somehow, that it seems to inspire me!-no-you are very good-very, indeed

-but really—with a proper sense of the obligation all along—I seem as if I should be quite as well satisfied to remain as I am, as

long as I can hold together.-Why, what the D-1 is all this "gypsy-jargon" about nerves and fibres, and I know not what, which is gaining head upon us every hour?-Nerves! -why, what can you do more, with all your nerves to help you, than live in a frenzy ?— and what do I do less?

Sen. Compose yourself, Mr Testy, while I proceed to tell you that your troubles are made of matter, and mine of spirit; that the body is a block, and the soul..... but, "canimus surdis;"—what do you know, or guess, of all those finer disquietudes, those quivering susceptibilities, that feverish fastidiousness, and those qualmish, recoiling disgusts, which constitute at once the pride and the plague of this gossamer frame of mine?--I, indeed, by the painful privilege of my nature, am, as it were, ambidexter in misery; being no less exquisitely alive to your grosser annoyances, or tangible tribulations, than to those subtler and more elegant agonies, which are my own peculiar inheritance; for the nerves, Sir, holding, by a sort of amphibious tenure, both to mind and body, acquaint me with the whole circle of dissatisfactions.

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