The other day I read an article in a home journal on the evils which may attend the ordinary custom of shaking hands. It was condemned as promoting the undesirable exchange of microbes which, in spite of careful ablutions, have their dwellivgplace on the hands. The most dangerous people to shako hands with, we are tol, are medical practitioners, nurses, hairdressers, butchers, sausage makers, tripe-merchants, tanners, ther-dressers. On the other hand, it is comparatively safe to shake hands with workers of metal; the reason being given that the metal sets up an oxidation, which acts as an antiseptic." Another article on the same subject says that chomicnl analysis has proved that gold coins accrete more disonse-germs than copper or silver, both of which more or less adapted to harbouring microbes. There is some comfort to be derived from the last statement, as a poet puts it:
And now at last I know, Now I am growing old, How great a blessing was my woo At scarcity of gold For this T soe Protected me From m untold."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.