Punch (70.1876)

April 8, 1876.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 131

"TRAIN UP A CHILD IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO."

Tommy (to Mamma, encouragingly). " Now then, Ma', harden your Heart, sit well down, and never say Die ! "

SANITABY SANGRADOISM.

Really, the Doctors are determined to frighten us out of our wits.
Every day we are warned to take care of our nerves, not to touch
alcohol, not to walk too far, not to play a game of cricket, or row on
the river with Amanda—

"Where on the ait all emerald is the osier,

Where the white swan-fleets indolently sway,

When, in the sunset, Beauty, growing rosier,

Murmurs, " How happy we have been to-day ! "—

not to sit up late o' nights, whether to hear the chimes at midnight
or unsphere the spirit of Plato ; not to do anything which our
strong forefathers did freely, yet lived to a good old age with clear
brains to the last, in spite of gout and insanitary surroundings.

Such Sages as Cleobultts and Pittactjs were all very well with
their " Measure is best" and " Nothing in excess " : but nowadays
we are vexed with an immoderate moderation, an intemperate
intemperance. Here is Dr. Richardson, who tells us that alcohol
roduces "Nothing but disease and death—mental disease, mental
eath ; physical disease, physical death." Silence the profane
rhymer, who sings—

Hear, oh hear!
Dionysus and Demeteb.—

Give, oh give
"Wine and corn, that the Poet may live:
All Olympus I disdain,
Blest with aid of that glorious twain.

And don't for a moment suppose that one drink is worse than
another. " To say this man only drinks ale, that man only drinks
wine, while a third drinks spirits, is merely to say, when the
apology is unclothed, that all drink the same danger." Mr. Punch
has never unclothed an apology ; but he holds that there is less
danger in a pint of sound ale or wine than in a much smaller dose of
branay or whiskey.

The same medical luminary objects to exercise, except of a languid
sort. He thinks the tortoise wiser than the eagle. Perhaps he is,

if length of life is the only desideratum. " Centuries of life in the
aggregate," says a Times Critic, as humorously as if he were writing
for this lighter page, "may have been sacrificed by the single
invention of the staircase." If so, what has the railway to answer
for, shattering every fibre of brain and body through miles of travel?
Let us all be lotos-eaters. Let us swing in hammocks, and read
feuilletons, and smoke latakia. A pleasant idea, doubtless; but the
world will move, and its inhabitants must move with it. Besides,
what says Sir Walter ?—

" Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife !
To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name."

The heroes eat no lotos. Ulysses and Mr. Punch alike decline
torpidity. The universe wants the mind of man to keep it going.
Fancy the result if everybody were to give up hard work and mid-
night fun, to stay at home and nurse his nerves, and go to bed
early after a moderate supper of water-gruel! Faith, it would be
high time for the Ladies to take the reins—and they would do it too,
and make the " mildeyed melancholy lotos-eaters" break into a
sharp trot.

There are doctors of nerves, whom it pleases
To write about modern diseases :

"Who believes in their books

Will feel "off the hooks"
If he suddenly shivers or sneezes.

Appalling the tiniest swerve is

To any who knows not what nerve is—

But the string of the bow

Wrhence brain-arrows flow,
Oft must tremble to do the State service.

0 reader, who wisdom discernest,
Take life at its gayest or sternest:

The doctors may prate,

They are welcome to wait.
Eat and drink, work and play, in good earnest.

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