Athothis : a satire on modern medicine / by Thomas C. Minor.

CHAPTER XI. IN WHICH THE SPIRITS TAKE A RIDE BEHIND AN OLD FASHIONED PHAETON AND OVERHEAR A CONVERSATION BETWEEN A RURAL PRECEPTOR AND HIS STUDENT. ELOW, lay a winding road traversing a quietly h picturesque country, with long stretches of meadow land alternating with elevated knolls, on which were handsome farm-houses and capa- cious barns. Cattle and sheep were browsing over innu- merable pastures, and the whole landscape betokened the presence of a rich agricultural and stock raising com- munity. "What fertile land!" said Athothis, admiringly. "It reminds me of the Nile homes in the palmy days of the first dynasty, when Egypt was truly a land of milk and honey, and these black men working in the fields are perhaps the descendants of those of our African slaves who labored under King Pepi in the eleventh dynasty." "'Tis indeed a rich farming country!" exclaimed Paulus Androcydes, proudly. " This is the South- land, where they still live the easy patriarchal lives of their forefathers, amid lowing herds and bleating flocks ; where the warm sunshine always smiles and the kindly earth yields up a never failing crop." " Yet, even in this mundane Paradise, they have sick- ness, observed Athothis ; " for, I notice on the highway immediately under us, an antique looking doctor's vehicle. Let us descend, and, like mischievous boys have done from the earliest dynasties, steal a ride ! I see that the phae- ton has two occupants."