Laugh and Grow Well.

Otago Witness, Issue 2203, 21 May 1896, Page 52

Laugh and Grow Well.

In a singular treatise on laughter the writer give 3an instance that is of itself laughable enough. A patient being very low with .fever, and the physician in attendance being at a loss as to ho«v he should produce a reaction had ordered a dose of rhubarb ; but after Ihe medicine hid been prepared, fearing ita debilitatiug effects, thp order was countermanded. Not long'thereafter a pet monkey belonging to the patient that had been in the room all the while, seeing the^ goblet in which the nurse hnd prepared the rejected medicine still standing on the tab'e, slipped slyly up, took it in his hands, and put it to his lips. The fiivt taste wai probably novel, and he made a comical grims-cc, but he disliked to give up. Another sip, and he got tbe sweet of the syrup. His grotesque visage brightened. He cast a furtive glance round, and then sat quietly down, with the goblet grasped firmly; and pretty soon he placed it to his lips, and drank to the dregs. Perhaps th°ra had been half a wine-glassful cf syrup of manna — not morewhile the rhubarb had all settled. But he h*d found it, and before be had fully realised the change of taste he had swallowed nearly the whole of the nauseous dose. The patient was spellbound. Never in bis life had he seen anything so grotesquely and ridiculously human ! The visage of the disgusted monkey was a study. It wr.s a whojo volume of utter abomination and chagrin. Ha ' ground his lee'b, and actually st l .'.mppd uis_ foot, 03 he had seen hij master do wheu in wrath. Anon the climax came. He stood up, his eyes flashed, he grasped the goblet by its slender stalk with all his might, shut his teetb, and then, with a spiteful, vengeful snap, he hurled it with mad fury upon the flo'»r, and seemed entirely sstisfi'id ns he saw the thousand glittering pieces flying sb ut. Never before had the patient seen anything to equal it. The wholo scene, and all the circumstances — everything about it — appeared to him to comically ludicrous, tbab he burst into a fib of laughter that lasted until his nu'se came in to sac what was thn matter. Aad wh^n he i to tell her ho laughed again more heartily, it possible, than before — laughed until he sank | back exhausted, and in a profuse pers pi ration.

The nurse anxiously sponged and wiped bis skin ; ho perspired and laughed again until he slept. When he awoke the reaction had come, the fever had been brokeu, and h9 was on the sure road to convalescence.— Casaell's Saturday Journal.