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more acute, by there being no commiseration for the wretchedness it occasions. The belief in this and a keen recolleetion of bodily and mental sufferings, have produced the following little narrarative:-
Some years ago, a tremendous tooth, with threo enormous prongs, confined me to my room, and irritated me to a state little short of distraction. With my head tied up in a bandana handkerchief, both hands on my afflicted jaw, I sat swaying my body to and fro, as if endeavouring to calm a fractious infant; at other times I stamped about like a lunaetie, or plunged on my bed like a frog swiming. Being at length reduced to a state of exhaustion, I was anxious to retreat from all intereourse with the world; yet knoek after knoek at the door continued, as if only to inereaso my already excessive nervous irritability. Many of the persons I had no desire to see, but some were those interwoven with my professional pursuits, and I was compelled to be at home. I had to account for my disconsolate appearance—to describe my tormenting pangs, till I was weary of speaking upon the subject. To all my fervid deseriptions, I reeeived the cold remark, and the ehilling advice, that it was only the toothache, and that I had better have it extracted. All this time, the salivary glands, were pouring their fluids into my mouth, the gastric juices were wasting their powers, and I was in a paroxysm of excruciating anguish. It was astonishing how persons eould calmly behold such a complieation of miseries. Nothing eould bo eaten; slops became offensive; the sight of a spoon frightful; and a basin revolting as a perpetual blister. Even the air could not be taken!-it was too much for the petulance of my capricious tooth. On it
