onch-shell might stand on your mantel, to be taken
up and held to the ear, that you may be soothed by its continual
lulling sound, when you feel the blue fit stealing over you. For
sights, a gay-painted punch-bowl, or Dutch tankard--never mind about
filling it--might be recommended. It should be placed on a bracket in
the pier. Nor is an old-fashioned silver ladle, nor a chased
dinner-castor, nor a fine portly demijohn, nor anything, indeed, that
savors of eating and drinking, bad to drive off the spleen. But perhaps
the best of all is a shelf of merrily-bound books, containing comedies,
farces, songs, and humorous novels. You need never open them; only have
the titles in plain sight. For this purpose, Peregrine Pickle is a good
book; so is Gil Blas; so is Goldsmith.

But of all chamber furniture in the world, best calculated to cure a
had temper, and breed a pleasant one, is the sight of a lovely wife. If
you have children, however, that are teething, the nursery should be a
good way up stairs; at sea, it ought to be in the mizzen-top. Indeed,
teething children play the very deuce with a husband's temper. I have
known three promising young husbands completely spoil on their wives'
hands, by reason of a teething child, whose worrisomeness happened to
be aggravated at the time by the summer-complaint. With a breaking
heart, and my handkerchief to my eyes, I followed those three hapless
young husbands, one after the other, to their premature graves.

Gossiping scenes breed gossips. Who so chatty as hotel-clerks, market
women, auctioneers, bar-keepers, apothecaries, newspaper-reporters,
monthly-nurses, and all those who live in bustling crowds, or are
present at scenes of chatty interest.

Solitude breeds taciturnity; _that_ every body knows; who so taciturn
as authors, taken as a race?

A forced, interior quietude, in the midst of great out-ward commotion,
breeds moody people. Who so moody as railroad-brakemen,
steam-boat-engineers, helmsmen, and tenders of power-looms in cotton
factories? For all these must hold their peace while employed, and let
the machinery do the chatting; they cannot even edge in a single
syllable.

Now, this theory about the wondrous influence of habitual sights and
sounds upon the human temper, was suggested by my experiences on board
our frigate. And al-though I regard the example furnished by our
quarter-gunners--especially him who had once been our top-mate--as by
far the strongest argum