The morning post brought us a neat pamphlet purporting to reveal the secret of keeping well. Skimming its pages, we concluded that the sender had mistaken our sex until we came to "The Problem of Thirst." Then we realized that it was truly meant for us, and we turned to the beginning and read with great care.
According to our unknown well-fisher the first thing to do if one desires to keep well, is to breathe. One had frankly suspected this to be the ease, but was not certain. It transpires, moreover, that there is more than one method of breathing. Nor were we altogether with.
Kling, of this, in view of aving Min awake many a time to the music of the spheres as performed in a railway sleeping coach. It further transpires that Hamlet was wrong when he said the play's the thing. It isn't. The nose is the thing, accord-to the author of our' health ts, who has discovered that the mouth is to eat with and to talk with, while the nose is to breathe th. "He might have added that it is also to smell with, to say nothing of gaining an idea of other people's. affairs. But then neither of these functions is conducive to health, The reader of the pamphlet next adjured to develop the habit of deep breathing by taking six deep breaths before an open window the first thing in the morning and again on retiring at night. Certain factors, unnoted by the author, militate against. thi practice. They are, (a)—If you live in the neighbourhood of Soochow or Siccawei Creeks (b)—If the people who Hive opposite insist on cooking to-morrow's cabbage the evening before, and (c)—If there are quarrelsome people in the neigh-Bourhood. Missiles have a curious, habit of finding the shortest tance between the propeller and the nose of the disinterested, or innocent, by-stander and are not conductive to his health, Haying learned to breathe, the next thing to do is to learn how to sleep. This appeara to apply to the fair sex rather than to men, for we fare instructed that ladies who wish to be good-looking should get munch beauty sleep as they can, Not a difficult matter, this, artd quite consonant with the discovery ladies who wish to be tall should grow as much as possible, oF they do not wish to become stout they must be at special pains to remain thin. Our author, however, is firmly convinced that sleep shortest road to beauty. where ladies are concerned. "Ig this, per~ haps, his way of suggesting' that, fas sleep occurs chiefly in the dark; many ladies look far better after the sun has set? We hesitate to contradict his dictum, but at the same time recall having once employed a maid who slept practically all of the time and who was far from beautiful. But then, being a maid, she could not possibly have been a lady, #0. that must be the explanation of why she never became good-looking.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.