feeble pulse?

If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick bed. How the patient lords
it there! what caprices he acts without controul! how kinglike he
sways his pillow--tumbling, and tossing, and shifting, and lowering,
and thumping, and flatting, and moulding it, to the ever varying
requisitions of his throbbing temples.

He changes _sides_ oftener than a politician. Now he lies full length,
then half-length, obliquely, transversely, head and feet quite across
the bed; and none accuses him of tergiversation. Within the four
curtains he is absolute. They are his Mare Clausum.

How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself! he
is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfishness is inculcated upon
him as his only duty. 'Tis the Two Tables of the Law to him. He has
nothing to think of but how to get well. What passes out of doors, or
within them, so he hear not the jarring of them, affects him not.

A little while ago he was greatly concerned in the event of a
law-suit, which was to be the making or the marring of his dearest
friend. He was to be seen trudging about upon this man's errand to
fifty quarters of the town at once, jogging this witness, refreshing
that solicitor. The cause was to come on yesterday. He is absolutely
as indifferent to the decision, as if it were a question to be tried
at Pekin. Peradventure from some whispering, going on about the
house, not intended for his hearing, he picks up enough to make him
understand, that things went cross-grained in the Court yesterday,
and his friend is ruined. But the word "friend," and the word "ruin,"
disturb him no more than so much jargon. He is not to think of any