forks before him--still he is a miserable
creature, he drinks to desperation, and is carried home at least three
hours sooner than he would be on a fine frosty night. Then, instead of
fifteen pounds to the square inch, atmospheric pressure is increased to
five-and-forty, not calculating the _simoom_ of the following morning,
when he is as dry as the desert of Sahara, and eyes the pumps and
soda-water fountains with as much _gout_ as the Israelites did the water
from Mount Horeb.

Man, however, is the most helpless of all creatures in water, and with the
exception of a few proscribed pickpockets and swindlers, he is almost as
helpless on land. This infirmity, or difficulty of keeping above water,
accounts for the crammed state of our prisons, fond as we are of the
element. On the great rivers of China, where thousands of people find it
more convenient to live in covered boats upon the water, than in houses on
shore, the younger and male children have a _hollow ball_ of some light
material attached constantly to their necks, so that in their frequent
falls overboard, they are not in danger. Had we not read this in a grave,
philosophical work, we should have thought it a joke upon poor humanity,
or at best a piece of poetical justice, and that the hollow ball, &c.
represented the head--fools being oftener inheritors of good fortune than
their wiser companions. As the great secret in swimming is to keep the
chest as full of air as possible, perhaps the great art of living is to
keep the head a _vacuum_, a state "adapted to the meanest capacity." But
had kind Nature supplied us with an air-bladder at the neck, the heaviest
of us might have floated to eternity, Leander's swimming across the
Hellespont no wonder at all, and the drags of the Humane Society be
converted into halters for the suspension and recovery of old offenders
and small debts.

_A wet day in London_ is what every gentleman who does not read, or does
not recollect, Shakspeare, calls _a bore_,[3] and every lady decides to be
a _nuisance_. Abroad, everything is discomfiture; at home all is fidget
and uneasiness. What is called a smart shower, sweeps off a whole stand of
hackney-coaches in a few seconds, and leaves a few leathern conveniences
called cabriolets, so that your only alternative is that of being soaked
to the skin, or pitched out, taken up, bled, and carried home in "a state
of insensibility." The Spanish proverb, "it never rains but it pours" soon