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John Doe and Richard Roe; Or, Episodes of Life in New York
John Doe and Richard Roe Or Episodes of Life in New York Author:Edward Sherman Gould General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1862 Original Publisher: Carleton Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select... more » from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IX. JAES AND SWEETMEATS. Doctoe Jenkins's wife was jealous -- perhaps the greatest blunder that a physician's wife can commit. The wife of any other man has a nominal remedy for that disease, because every other man is the slave of time. He is bound to hours. They may be late hours ; they may be irregular hours; but, in the sailor's phrase, he fetches up somewhere. And if he doesn't come to time, he can be required to explain. Again, any other man can be watched and followed and spotted. However numerous his friends, however ramified his business, however scattered the localities where any contingency may call for his presence; these all have a limit, which can be expressed on paper and made to assume the exactitude of a mathematical proposition. So that, a woman can compare the possible limits with the actual practice, and thus detect a false step if it varies but a thousandth part of an inch from perpendicularity. And then, having ascertained the perturbation, she can follow it up to its primary cause with terrible certainty. But the physician can baffle her skill, generally. He can set at naught her art. He can defy her science. Not intentionally perhaps; not systematically ; not even consciously, need this be: but from necessity, and in the nature of the case -- always, andof course, excepting necessary exceptions. Look at it! Can any human sagacity tell, by conjecture, where he goes ? why he goes ? or when he goes ? Do the night watches, or the day watches, clocks, sundials, or hourglasses find him asleep ? Did Argus ever see his eyes closed, unless when he...« less