India garrison have adopted that very old fashioned proverb, never penned in London, which saith,

"Early to bed, and early to rise,

Makes a man healthy, and wealthy, and wise."

"The clock had struck the hour

Of five, and they all deem'd it time to go."

This is a perfect truism. The clock had actually struck five; the loud report of the morning-gun had burst upon the ears of the fair assembly at Government House before they could find resolution enough to leave the merry dance, and proceed towards.

"home, sweet home."

This is nearly always the case at a public party: the quadrille seems never to fatigue, and always to exhilarate the guests. The completion of one appears only to stimulate them to the commencement of another; and, in the meanwhile, time, who from the happy flies so swiftly, and from the woeful with such a tardy wing, has borne away the hours of the night; and when, at length, the gentlemen have buttoned their surtouts, and the ladies have concealed their fairy figures in the many folds of their silken cloaks, morning has dawned upon the isle, and the early, yet splendid rays of the tropic sun are already updrawing the dew from the flowers.

This may be termed a general specimen of West India balls; yet in the island of Grenada the same parties meet in a more social manner; and though the gaiety may be as great, the dance as spirited, and the happiness as perfect, the guests, as a matter of course, disperse at an earlier hour.

CHAPTER LIII.

FEVERS AND THEIR EFFECTS-A RIDE AND A RIVER SCENE.

"We are all diseased;

And with our surfeiting and wanton hours,

Have brought ourselves into a burning fever."

Shakspeare.

"The laundress must be sure to tear her smocks in the washing."-Swift.

I Do not tell the reader that the people go to balls night after night, or even week after week, in the tropics, with impunity. Many a man by dancing, drinking, and dissipation, has provoked the attack of that, which has effectually prevented him from dancing, drinking, or dissipating more. Many a young and fairy being, many a lovely, innocent, and smiling creole, has gained, in the merry dance, in that exhilarating whirl which fills her eye with animation, and her heart with joyousness, that which has borne her, in her beauty and her bloom, away to an early grave.

The diseases of the Western Isles leave the invalid but little time for penitence or reflection.

In the short space of three days, the fever which rages in the brain, and burns in the blood of the victim, is either defeated and defied by the hardy vigor

of a

young and healthful constitution, or extinguished by the cold and clammy touch of death. To-day I dine with the strong and the healthy; to-morrow I follow him to his home of homes. The grim skeleton, however, is usually more lenient to the old inhabitants than to the new comers. It is the seasoning fever that does the work of death. It is this that the afflicted father curses with the curse of bitterness; over this does the mother mourn in the tenderness of her grief.

But I have seen a hundred of the aged who have passed their grand climacterics. Sixty, seventy, eighty years, have rolled over their hoary heads, and they are now on the high road to a hundred; and yet they show no signs of dying. They live on in the hardihood of their health, in spite of the sighing of their relatives, and the impatience of their heirs.

And I have seen the young too, the young, the beautiful, the brave; they came in the pride of health, they were flowers that promised long to blossom in their beauty; they were gay, and innocent, and joyous; wild as the air they breathed; unthinking as the earth they trod on; beloved by their relatives, admired by their friends, and triumphing in the prospect of happiness; and happiness was theirs, and they enjoyed it. And a week passed away, a week of pleasure, the dissipated pleasure of the world; but it passed soon in its blissfulness, and then came fever, and it seized them with its burning grasp; and disease, and it breathed upon them the breath of corruption; and a phantom, a grim, gaunt,

gloomy, grinning phantom, and it touched them with the withering hand of death. So the flowers were blasted in the loveliness of their bloom, and the young in the elasticity of their youthfulness, and the beautiful in the pride of their beauty, and the brave in the vanity of their courage. They were conveyed to their last homes, and their parents wept for them a season, a short season, and their relatives mourned for them a while, a little while, and their friends missed them for a day or two. After this came pleasure, hand in hand with oblivion; and the dance and the festival were resumed, and the worms feasted on the buried, and the men forgot them in their gaiety.

In all this there is a deep and impressive warning, but it is a warning that is not heeded. I was in Grenada, when the scarlet fever was pursuing its ravages; and there such scenes were of every day occurrence; indeed, I believe their frequency deprived them of their effect. In the West Indies custom reconciles us to the sight of death, as it does in England to the sight of misery. And yet, that same fever, I mean the scarlet, is a terrible enemy to wrestle with, and there are few who survive the combat.

In the West Indies, however, any fever is bad enough, and I think the "seasoner," is as bad as any. I had one in Barbados, that thinned and weakened me; another in St. Vincent, that nearly kilt me, and a third in Grenada, that nearly killed me.

This fever attacked me one morning after a dance

of my own, and two or three after the entertainment I have already spoken of, given by the Governor. It was the dissipation of these two nights, and two more besides, that had fairly knocked me up; and it was my father who in a great fright sent for a doctor

to recover me.

Now, next to the approach of death and the devil himself, I do shudder at the forthcoming of a doctor. Let him be physician, surgeon, apothecary, or apprentice, equally doth he terrify me with his prescriptions. My fancy teemeth with pills, and the payment for the same; with visits (guinea visits), vexations, and vital air; with blisters, bolus, and the bill; with hot waters, bleeding, and Gil Blas-isms— the very thought of the remedy is to me worse than the disease.

But the doctor came though, and there was no help for it; and he felt my beating pulse, and said it went very quick; and my burning forehead, and pronounced it very hot; and my palpitating heart, and told me there was a lady in the case; whereat I muttered, God forbid! and gave him a guinea for his pains and his penetration.

But the doctor was right, and though I threw the prescription out of the window, and the prescribed after it, though I ate beef-steaks because he forbade it, and drank sangaree because he said it would kill me, and though the same cured me when the doctor could not, still he was right; my heart beat not because my brain was fevered, its palpitation was for her I loved; for Laura, whose dear image