under the names of port and sherry) are
downright poisons, and will ruin the strongest
constitutions. If you can't get good and pure
wine abstain from it altogether: so with beer.
As to the more potent alcohols, brandy,
rum, gin, whiskey, arrack, their comparative
purity may be tested simply enough: pour a few
rops on your hands and rub them together
briskly. Apply your nose to the palms, and the
smell will at once tell you whether you have a
pure article or a Fousel Oil counterfeit: the
Fousel Oil, which immediately betrays its
presence by its repulsive smell, is a poison that you
cannot too carefully avoid. Enjoy all the
Creator's gifts cheerfully, but in moderation;
and be not deceived when you see a grey-
haired glutton or a drunkard of fourscore,
and say to yourself "O, I can feast, I can
carouse without stint. Here is a hog that has
grunted in Epicurus' stye for eighty years."
Remember: That a drunkard who hath
taken no hurt by his drink is no more a proof
of the innocuousness of drunkenness, than a
soldier who hath been to the wars and hath
never been wounded, is of the absence of
danger in. a battle.

A few more words on hygiène. Wear
strong and solid boots in winter. Instead of
an umbrella, which affords no real protection
against the rain, carry a hooded cloak, made
of light impermeable gauze, which, folded np,
may fit into your waistcoat pocket. Ladies,
instead of encumbering yourselves with a
parasol, wear a light broad-brimmed straw hat.
Eschew and denounce the use of spun-glass
tissues and brocades, which, unhappily, are again
coming into fashion. They are confusion. Their
use was very properly abandoned during the
eighteenth century, because it was found that
the pulverulent particles of spun glass affected
the lungs most seriously, and often even
fatally. I can corroborate this statement of
M. Raspail from a fact within my own
knowledge. Some years ago the Mistress of the
Robes of one of the principal metropolitan
theatres, told me that an accomplished
actress insisted upon wearing a dress of
some newly introduced spun-glass tissue or
brocade in a Christmas piece. The dress
was made in the wardrobe of the theatre;
and, shortly afterwards, half the workwomen
who were employed upon it were laid up
with sore fingers, whitlows, and severe
coughs. Workmen employed in the preparation
of colours or other substances into the
composition of which mineral colours enter,
wash your heads and hands, first in lye-water,
afterwards in soap-water, when leaving work,
at meal-times or at night. Bird-stuffers,
never use arsenical or mercurial preparations
to protect the skins you stuff against the
voracity of insects. It is fraught with the most
pernicious and fatal consequences to yourselves
and to the collectors and curators of museums
of natural history. The desired object may
be obtained as fully, and in a perfectly safe
manner, by impregnating the internal surface
of the skins with a soution of aloes and pepper,
to be afterwards sprinkled with powdered
camphor. House-painters, discontinue the use
of the arsenical compound, known as Scheele's
green: it is confusion. Substitute for it a
green composed of iron and copper, which is
cheaper, sanitary, and as beautiful in colour.
Housekeepers, have all your copper vessels
tinned on the inside. Make all your pickles
and preserves at home. Never boil halfpence
with your Brussells sprouts to green them.
It is destruction. Let your spoons and forks
be of silver, of tin, or of tinned iron, but on no
account of German silver, or of any other of
the multinamed compositions pretending to
imitate, or to be substitutes for, gold and
silver. The art of preparing a substance that
shall in every way replace gold and silver,
remains as yet to be discovered. Keep
your kitchens and dining-rooms scrupulously
clean. A clean kitchen is, in nine-and-three-
quarter cases out of ten, the criterion of
a clean housewife and a happy household.
Governors, prohibit the sale of arsenic
absolutely: the prohibition ought also to
extend to rat's-bane. Subject physicians'
prescriptions of a dangerous nature to the
control of a sanitary board; and make the
apothecary who shall dispense a dangerous
preparation, equally responsible for the
consequences with the physician who has
prescribed it. For, M. Raspail maintains that
the materia medica of the old school contains
not one agent of a deleterious or dangerous
nature, of which the therapeutic effects may
not be as fully and effectually produced by
an innocuous substance. Tramps, gipsies, you
that sleep in the open air, on the ground, in
trees or haystacks, stuff your ears with
cotton, or tie a bandage round your head.
Otherwise you will have ear-ache and affections
caused by the introduction of seeds,
beards of grass, &c., into the auditory tube,
the nasal chamber, or windpipe. Mothers,
feed not your children upon sweets, biscuits,
or mucilages. They feed not them, but
ascarides, parasites instead. Give them, rather,
sound condiments and wholesome pickles.
Wise men and women, all look early upon life
as a duty, upon death as an accident or a
necessity. Guard against the suggestions of
hatred and the aberrations of love. Avoid
enervating pursuits and expensive pleasures.
Rise in the morning as soon as you wake;
go to bed at night as soon as you feel that
it requires a strong effort of volition to keep
your eyes open. Be angry as seldom as ever
you can. Never go to law. Be economical,
never avaricious. Work, wash, and pray. So
shall you live to a good old age, and your
death, at last, be but an extinction of vitality,
without pain or suffering. Nay, the length
of human life might equal the fabulous
longevity of the inhabitants of the sea, if
we had in every season a constant and
invariable temperature around us. But we
have not.