nk of dyspepsia with a
hundred and twenty stomachs, and a different doctor for each!

Do not imagine this a plea for the transcendental diet that drove Sydney
Smith to that pathetic sigh, "Ah, I wish they would allow me even the
wing of a roasted butterfly!" But perhaps it would not be amiss to
conjure up a terror-demon from these bodies of ours, so that we should
fear to violate laws with such merciless penalties,--should have none
but well-cooked food, at sensible and systematic hours. Is it strange
that little Miss Bremer, who thought herself of soundest digestion,
after three months of American night-dinners with oysters and preserve,
is at last seen to grasp Dr. Osgood with both hands, exclaiming, in
tears, "Oh, help me!" I want to save you from resembling the great
people of the world after the manner of Dr. Beattie, whose title to
genius was, "Have I not headaches like Pope, vertigo like Swift, gray
hairs like Homer? Do I not wear large shoes for fear of corns like
Virgil, and sometimes complain of sore eyes like Horace?"

Therefore I hope that your H. will make the counting-room conform to
regular mid-day dinner and early tea-time. And let us trust that it will
not have the same fatal result as with King Louis XII., who is said to
have died earlier from changing his dinner-hour in compliment to his
foreign bride.

One can hardly think of late suppers without turning quite away to those
ideal tea-takings of the Wordsworths at Grasmere. "Plain living and high
thinking," was the motto of the philosopher-poet, and that table was
never crowded with viands. One can well believe, that, as De Quincey
said, in the quiet walks after tea the face of the poet "grew solemn and
spiritual as any saint's." But he probably was thinking very high when
he drew a knife from the buttered toast and cut the leaves of a new book
just lent to him!

Quite sombre are the memories of Rydal Mount; but since we are really
alive, let us be lively. Behold me, then, dear M., well turbaned and
aproned, and know that this is our churning-day. You give one of your
gleeful little shrieks, perhaps; but yes, it is true; we live in the
city, take a pint of milk per day, and make butter.

And where is the churn? you suggest. Oh, I extemporize that. It is out
of the question to buy every convenient thing, or purse will run dry and
house overflow. Dr. Kane hints how few dishes it is possible to use; and
the plan is admirable; so one need not buy a c