e which would
call upon us to assist our brute development by the mere exercising of
ourselves as animals. Such counsel offers to degrade us to the low
position of the race-horse who is trotted to and fro, the poodle who is
sent out for an airing. As spiritual people, we look down with much
contempt upon the man who would in any thing compare us with the lower
animals. His mind is mean, and must be quite beneath our indignation. I
will say no more. Why thrash a pickpocket with thunder?

XII. A Bedroom Paper.

If you wish to have a thoroughly unhealthy bedroom, these are the
precautions you should take.

Fasten a chimney-board against the fireplace, so as to prevent foul air
from escaping in the night. You will, of course, have no hole through the
wall into the chimney; and no sane man, in the night season, would have a
door or window open. Use no perforated zinc in paneling; especially avoid
it in small bedrooms. So you will get a room full of bad air. But in the
same room there is bad, worse, and worst: your object is to have the worst
air possible. Suffocating machines are made by every upholsterer; attach
one to your bed; it is an apparatus of poles, rings, and curtains. By
drawing your curtains around you before you sleep, you insure to yourself
a condensed body of foul air over your person. This poison vapor-bath you
will find to be most efficient when it is made of any thick material.

There being transpiration through the skin, it would not be a bad idea to
see whether this can not be in some way hindered. The popular method will
do very well: smother the flesh as much as possible in feathers. A
wandering princess, in some fairy tale, came to a king's house. The king's
wife, with the curiosity and acuteness proper to her sex, desired to know
whether their guest was truly born a princess, and discovered how to solve
the question. She put three peas on the young lady's paillasse, and over
them a large feather-bed, and then another, then another--in fact, fifteen
feather-beds. Next morning the princess looked pale, and, in answer to
inquiries how she had passed the night, said that she had been unable to
sleep at all, because the bed had lumps in it. The king's wife knew then
that their guest showed her good breeding. Take this high-born lady for a
model. The feathers retain all heat about your body, and stifle the skin
so far effectually, that you awake in the morning pervaded by a sense of
languor, whic