The Art is Long, His Cash Got Short

Love and Physic
by Bret Harte

A clever man was Dr. Digg;
Misfortunes well he bore;
He never lost his patience till
He had no patients more;
And though his practice once was large,
It did not swell his gains;
The pains he labored for were but
The labor for his pains.

The "art is long," his cash got short,
And well might Galen dread it,
For who will trust a name unknown
When merit gets no credit?
To marry seemed the only way
To ease his mind of trouble;
Misfortunes never singly come,
And misery made him double.

He had a patient, rich and fair,
That hearts by scores was breaking,
And as he once had felt her wrist,
He thought her hand of taking;
But what the law makes strangers do,
Did strike his comprehension;
Who live in these United States,
Do first declare intention.

And so he called. His beating heart
With anxious fears was swelling,
And half in habit took her hand
And on her tongue was dwelling;
But thrice tho' he essayed to speak,
He stopp'd, and stuck, and blundered;
For say, what mortal could be cool
Whose pulse was most a hundred?

"Madam," at last he faltered out,--
His love had grown courageous,--
"I have discerned a new complaint,
I hope to prove contagious;
And when the symptoms I relate,
And show its diagnosis,
Ah, let me hope from those dear lips,
Some favorable prognosis.

"This done," he cries, "let's tie those ties
Which none but death can sever;
Since 'like cures like,' I do infer
That love cures love, forever."
He paused -- she blushed; however strange
It seems on first perusal,
Altho' there was no promise made,
She gave him a refusal.

Says she, "If well I understand
The sentiments you're saying,
You do propose to take a hand--
A game that two are playing--
At whist; one's partner ought to be
As silent as a mummy,
But in the game of love, I think,
I shall not take a dummy.

"I cannot marry one who lives
By other folks' distresses;
The man I marry, I must love,
Nor fear his fond caresses;
For who, whatever be their sex,
However strange the case is,
Would like to have a doctor's bill
Stuck up into their faces?"

Perhaps you think, 'twixt love and rage,
He took some deadly potion,
Or with his lancet breathed a vein
To ease his pulse's motion.
To guess the vent of his despair,
The wisest one might miss it;
He reached his office -- then and there
He charged her for the visit!