In consequence of the increasing demands of the incomparable Miss
JESSIMINA upon the dancing attendance of your humble servant, I am
lately become as idle as a newly painted ship, and have not drunk in the
legal wisdom of the learned _Moonshees_ who lecture in the hall of my
Inn of Court, or opened the ponderous treatise of Hon'ble Justice
BLACKSTONE or ADDISON on _Torts_, for many a blank day.

Still, as Philosopher PLATO observed, "_Nihil humani alienum a me
puto_," and my time has not been actually squandered in the theft of
Procrastination, but rather employed in the proper study of Mankind, and
acquiring a more complete knowingness in _Ars Vivendi_.

So I think it worth to direct public attention to the dangers of a
practice which threatens to develop into an epidemical kind of plague,
and carry the deteriorating trails of a serpent over our household
families, unless promptly scotched by benevolent firmness of a paternal
Government.

Need I explain I am alluding to the nowaday passion for propelling
oneself at a severe speed by dint of unstable and most precarious
machinery? It is now the exception which breaks the rule to take the air
in the streets without being startled by the unseemly spectacles of
go-ahead citizens straddled upon such revolutionary contrivances,
threading their way with breakneck velocity under the very noses of
omnibus and other horses, and ringing the shrill welkin of a
tintinnabulating gong!

Nay, even after the Curfew has taken its toll from the knell of parting
day, and darkness reigns supreme, they will urge on their wild career,
illuminated by the dim religious light of a small oil lamp!

I possess no knack of medical knowledge, but I boldly state my opinion
that such daredevilry must necessarily inflict a deleterious result to
the nervous organisms of these riders; and, who knows, of their
posterity?

For no one can expect to have hairbreadth escapes from the running
gauntlet continuously, without suffering a shattering internal panic,
while catastrophes of fatal injury to life and limb have become _de
rigueur_.

_Experto crede_--for I can support my _obiter dictum_ by the crushing
weight of personal experience. A few mornings since I had the honour to
escort Miss JESSIMINA MANKLETOW and a middle-aged select female boarder
into the interior of Hyde Park. The day was fine, though frigid, and I
was wearing my fur-lined overcoat, with boots of patent Japan leather,
and a Bomb