throughout him, and perhaps continued during the next day. A quiet and
refreshing night's rest followed, and alacritous waking in the morning;
but all this was far more probably owing, as has been already hinted, to
excellent and well-considered habits of diet and exercise. Nevertheless he
still continued the cordial with tolerable regularity,--the more, because
on one or two occasions, happening to omit it, it so chanced that he slept
wretchedly, and awoke in strange aches and pains, torpors, nervousness,
shaking of the hands, bleared-ness of sight, lowness of spirits and other
ills, as is the misfortune of some old men,--who are often threatened by a
thousand evil symptoms that come to nothing, foreboding no particular
disorder, and passing away as unsatisfactorily as they come. At another
time, he took two or three drops at once, and was alarmingly feverish in
consequence. Yet it was very true, that the feverish symptoms were pretty
sure to disappear on his renewal of the medicine. "Still it could not be
that," thought the old man, a hater of empiricism (in which, however, is
contained all hope for man), and disinclined to believe in anything that
was not according to rule and art. And then, as aforesaid, the dose was so
ridiculously small!

Sometimes, however, he took, half laughingly, another view of it, and felt
disposed to think that chance might really have thrown in his way a very
remarkable mixture, by which, if it had happened to him earlier in life,
he might have amassed a larger fortune, and might even have raked together
such a competency as would have prevented his feeling much uneasiness
about the future of little Pansie. Feeling as strong as he did nowadays,
he might reasonably count upon ten years more of life, and in that time
the precious liquor might be exchanged for much gold. "Let us see!" quoth
he, "by what attractive name shall it be advertised? 'The old man's
cordial?' That promises too little. Poh, poh! I would stain my honesty, my
fair reputation, the accumulation of a lifetime, and befool my neighbor