"
I remember, on one particular occasion, when the oft-ruffled serenity
of my step-mother's temperament was wonderfully agitated, that she
reproached him most touchingly for the utter absence of this tender,
palpitating organ; and turning towards her with a smile of the
blandest amusement, he explained to her, in a tone of remonstrative
sarcasm, laying two rigid fingers of one hand argumentatively in the
open palm of the other, "that no man could live without a heart," that
it was an essential element of existence, that its professional name
was derived from the Latin _cor_ or _cordis_, that it was "the great
central organ of circulation, with its base directed backward towards
the spine, and its point, forward and downward, towards the left side,
and that at each contraction it would be felt striking between the
fifth and sixth ribs about four inches from the medium line." "So you
see, my dear," he concluded calmly and coldly, "that you talk
nonsense, when you say I have no heart." That was my father's
disposition; to suspect that any one, or anything else could hope for
the privilege of making his heart beat, except this natural physical
contraction, were a vain and empty surmise indeed. And yet he had been
twice married; the question may suggest itself, had he ever loved? I
dare say he had analysed his amative propensity thoroughly, and knew
to what extent it existed within him, but when a man can reconcile
himself to the belief that on the "middle line of the skull, at the
back part of his head, there is a long projection, below which, and
between two similar protuberances, is his Organ of amativeness," or
that by which he learns "the lesson of life, the sad, sad lesson of
loving," methinks he is not outraged by a public opinion which casts
him down in disgust from the pedestal of respectable humanity, and
this option I will leave to the reader, even though the subject in
this instance be my own parent.
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