s are more or less
one-sided. But that some invalids do much better in cities than in the
country is indisputable, and that the frightful dysenteries and fevers
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