ch children may be called, what
right has a parent to place on his child's head a disadvantage at the
start? Worse than the gauntlet of measles and whooping-cough and mumps
which the little ones have to run is this parental outrage.

What a struggle in life that child will have who has been baptized Jedekiah
or Mehitabel! If a child is "called after" some one living, let that one be
past mid-life and of such temperament that there shall be no danger of his
becoming an absconder and a cheat. As far as possible let the name given be
short, so that in the course of a lifetime there be not too many weeks or
months taken up in the mere act of signature. The burdens of life are heavy
enough without putting upon any one the extra weight of too much
nomenclature. It is a sad thing when an infant has two bachelor uncles,
both rich and with outrageous names, for the baby will have to take both
titles, and that is enough to make a case of infant mortality.

Quizzle.--You seem to me, governor, to be more sprightly at every
interview.

Well, that is so, but I do not know how long it will last; stout people
like myself often go the quickest.

There is a constant sympathy expressed by robust people for those of
slight physical constitution. I think the sympathy ought to turn in the
opposite direction. It is the delicate people who escape the most fearful
disorders, and in three cases out of four live the longest. These gigantic
structures are almost always reckless of health. They say, "Nothing hurts
me," and so they stand in draughts, and go out into the night air to cool
off, and eat crabs at midnight, and doff their flannels in April, and
carelessly get their feet wet.

But the delicate people are shy of peril. They know that disease has been
fishing for them for twenty years, and they keep away from the hook. No
trout can be caught if he sees the shadow of the sportsman on the brook.
These people whom everybody expects to die, live on most tenaciously.

I know of a young lady who evidently married a very wealthy man of
eighty-five years on the ground he was very delicate, and with reference to
her one-third. But the aged invalid is so careful of his health, and the
young wife so reckless of hers, that it is now uncertain whether she will
inherit his store-houses or he inherit her wedding-rings.

Health and longevity depend more upon caution and intelligent management of
one's self than upon original physical outfit. Paul's a