s
which have raged like pestilences in many of our country towns are almost
unknown in the better built sections of some of our large cities is
getting to be more generally understood since our well-to-do people have
annually emigrated in such numbers from the cemented surface of the city
to the steaming soil of some of the dangerous rural districts. If one
should contrast the healthiest country residences with the worst city
ones the result would be all the other way, of course, so that there are
two sides to the question, which we must let the doctors pound in their
great mortar, infuse and strain, hoping that they will present us with
the clear solution when they have got through these processes. One of
our chief wants is a complete sanitary map of every State in the Union.

The balance of our table, as the reader has no doubt observed, has been
deranged by the withdrawal of the Man of Letters, so called, and only the
side of the deficiency changed by the removal of the Young Astronomer
into our neighborhood. The fact that there was a vacant chair on the
side opposite us had by no means escaped the notice of That Boy. He had
taken advantage of his opportunity and invited in a schoolmate whom he
evidently looked upon as a great personage. This boy or youth was a good
deal older than himself and stood to him apparently in the light of a
patron and instructor in the ways of life. A very jaunty, knowing young
gentleman he was, good-looking, smartly dressed, smooth-checked as yet,
curly-haired, with a roguish eye, a sagacious wink, a ready tongue, as I
soon found out; and as I learned could catch a ball on the fly with any
boy of his age; not quarrelsome, but, if he had to strike, hit from the
shoulder; the pride of his father (who was a man of property and a civic
dignitary), and answering to the name of Johnny.

I was a little surprised at the liberty That Boy had taken in introducing
an extra peptic element at our table, reflecting as I did that a certain
number of avoirdupois ounces of nutriment which the visitor would dispose
of corresponded to a very appreciable pecuniary amount, so that he was
levying a contribution upon our Landlady which she might be inclined to
complain of. For the Caput mortuum (or deadhead, in vulgar phrase) is
apt to be furnished with a Venter vivus, or, as we may say, a lively
appetite. But the Landlady welcomed the new-comer very heartily.

--Why! how--do--you--do Johnny?! with the