Ask him if he don't want any watchers. I
don't mind settin' up any more 'n' a cat-owl. I was up all night twice
last month.
[My private opinion is, that there was no small amount of punch
absorbed on those two occasions, which I think I heard of at the
time;--but the offer is a kind one, and it isn't fair to question how
he would like sitting up without the punch and the company and the
songs and smoking. He means what he says, and it would be a more
considerable achievement for him to sit quietly all night by a sick man
than for a good many other people. I tell you this odd thing: there are
a good many persons, who, through the habit of making other folks
uncomfortable, by finding fault with all their cheerful enjoyments, at
last get up a kind of hostility to comfort in general, even in their
own persons. The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is
hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors. Look at old misers; first
they starve their dependants, and then themselves. So I think it more
for a lively young fellow to be ready to play nurse than for one of
those useful but forlorn martyrs who have taken a spite against
themselves and love to gratify it by fasting and watching.]
----The time came at last for me to make my visit.
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