h were concerned. A dried
and even tanned hide, could it have been fitted to her person with
sufficient exactness, would have subserved nearly the same purposes.

Perhaps you will excuse the tendency in the description of this case, to
exaggeration, when you are informed that the treatment of themselves, in
the particular here alluded to, by females especially, is one which
habitually fills one with disgust, and sometimes with indignation.
Persons of good sense, of both sexes, who from month to month, perhaps
from year to year, never wash their skins, nor use much muscular
exercise, ought to know that they must, sooner or later, experience the
dreadful penalty attached to violated physical law, and from which there
is, neither on earth nor in heaven, any possible escape. Can any one
suppose, for a moment, that so curious and complicated an organ as the
skin, and one of such considerable extent, has nothing to do?

Nearly every living person has some idea, of greater or less intensity,
of pores in the skin; at least, they use language which implies such an
idea. They talk, often, of the necessity of keeping these pores open.
But how is it to be done? Not certainly while they use little or no
muscular exercise, by washing, once a day, their hands and faces merely,
or, as some say, their fingers, their noses, and the tips of their
chins. They may talk, on occasions, very boldly and flippantly, about
_sweating_ away a cold, as they term it; but do they vainly suppose that
the sweat vessels or sweating machinery has nothing to do, from day to
day, which might prevent the necessity of resorting to these sweating
processes?

Miss L. appeared to be in utter ignorance of any laws of the skin, or of
the digestive or muscular systems. And yet her thoughts had been turned,
often and frequently, to her own feelings and sensations. She would
talk, almost incessantly, if anybody would hear her, about her aches and
pains, and could describe her whole train of feelings, from morning to
evening, with a faithfulness and patience and minuteness that would have
furnished a genius less than Defoe with material sufficient for quite a
huge volume.

Now I could have visited and counselled Miss L., at least once a week,
with great profit to herself, had she been as intelligent, in general,
as she was familiar with her own sensations. As things were, her
confidence was rather more troublesome than agreeable; but she was,
practically, a standi