It is called "Sympathetic" because of its intimate relationship with every part of the body. It superintends and energizes all of the processes of growth, repair, tissue building, respiration, circulation, and elimination of the waste material from the tissues.

The MIND is that sleepless sentinel who stands at the gates of life as long as we live, though it be a hundred years or more; it never slumbers nor sleeps for a single moment, night nor day. Nothing short of lethal doses of narcotic or anesthetic drugs can wrap it round in slumber-robes or stretch it on its dreamy couch; this only because its tenement of clay is no longer fit for its temporary abode.

It is that body servant of ours who never deserts us nor quits our service night nor day, for a single moment; a friend that truly sticketh closer than a brother, watching every heart-throb and every breath we draw.

It is that butler of ours, who, without orders from us, looks after the nourishment of every bone, muscle, nerve and tissue of our body, and provides us with every well-spring of thought and emotion.

It is that deft artisan who sees to the oiling of every joint in our frame, and keeps it from cracking and rasping with friction and the loss of mobility; who lubricates all of the surface of our body, internal and external, so that it does not dry up and crack to pieces, nor drip with excessive unction.

Illustration: Sympathetic Nerve Centers, to Obtain, from Peripheral Influences.
The Salient Points of Impression.

It is that faithful servant, who, without murmuring or complaint, controls our breathing, superintends, the pumping of our blood through the long hours of the night, and through the busy hours of the day, when we have no time to think of breath or blood.

It is that janitor of the temple of our soul who keeps the fires in our bodily frame and maintains a temperature of 98 1/2 degrees throughout every department of the "house not made with hands," through the summer's heat or winter's cold, whether we live on Greenland's icy mountains, or dwell in Afric's sunny clime.

It is that cunning servitor who always superintends the opening and closing of the iridescent curtains of the eye so as to let in just so much light as to enable us, in the glare of noon, or the shadows of twilight, to see with pleasure all of the beauties of the world around us.

It is that faithful warden who stands at the gateway of our stomach and reports instantly to the brain, whether we, in our ignorance and stupidity, put into our mouth a delicious morsel or a corrosive poison.

It is that cunning mechanician who sees to it, always, that our blood, as it courses furiously through its channels, is composed of so many white and so many red corpuscles, and that each corpuscle contains so many atoms of lime, sulphur, phosphorus, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, and all of the other sixty-five or more primal elements of our bodies, in exact proportions, and sees to it that, when each lays down its burden at the gateway of life, each atom thus carried into the economy of unerring selection, is built up into frame, muscle and tissue of our body, always renewing life in the midst of death throughout the term of our physical life.

And that same wise warden looks to it that every corpuscle or atom on its return journey, through other channels, is loaded with worn-out materials, to be carried out of the great temple of life, to again mingle with the clods of the valley.

The mind, through the great sympathetic nervous system, is the invincible defender of the fortress, who, amid the havoc of shot and shell, of saber stroke and leaden ball, the shock of concussion, the delirium of typhoid, the wreck of insanity, still guards, protects and repairs the breached fortifications of life.

Through all the vicissitudes of life, the great sympathetic nerve is still our best earthly friend and benefactor. It is the great clock in the temple's tower that calls for every passing change of life, wound up to run a hundred years or more; and as it ticks the allotted time of life, it marks the age of speechless, puling infancy, when it can neither understand nor tell its own wants; it measures off our youth and strikes the hour of manhood; it calls us to the mystery and mating time of love; it rings the dinner bell each day of our earthly life, and calls the hour of sleep and rest; it changes the epoch of gray hairs and slower gait, of waning vision, of shrunken shanks and biceps; it sets our voice in piping tones to prating of the times that were, the deeds of former days, and youthful prowess, and when these deeds are told, we sigh, and say, "We are growing old."

And then, some day, when we are ripe and ready for the change, it will ring the curtain down and close our mortal gaze, and as one who quits a tenement long kept, and gives it over to worms and mold and dust, to cobwebs and bats and flies, its wheels will turn slowly round, and the hammer fails to strike; the hours will then be tolled, and this same friend will go out from long control to terminate a long career, lie down to sleep - that sleep that knows no waking.

Then swift decay will come and cover us with mold, and order us with dispatch to assimilate with the clods that heap the valley, and leave us there, with time, the elements and God.

Who can comprehend its greatness, its countless capabilities, the vastness of its service, or the infinitude of the mind that planned and constructed it?