I see the exquisite instep, undefended but by a mere web. I
meditate upon the influence of the cold and wet upon the frame. I think of
the catarrhs, coughs, pleurisies, consumptions, and other interesting
affections that necessarily must result from their application to the
feet; and then I reckon up the number of pills, boluses, powders,
draughts, mixtures, leeches, and blisters, which will consequently be sent
in to the fair sufferers, calculate what they must come to, and wish that
I had the amount already in my pocket!"

A world of satirical truth is here, in a very small compass.

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There is a good story told recently of Baron Rothschild, of Paris, the
richest man of his class in the world, which shows that it is not only
"money which makes the mare go" (or horses either, for that matter), but
"_ready_ money," "unlimited credit" to the contrary notwithstanding. On a
very wet and disagreeable day, the Baron took a Parisian omnibus, on his
way to the Bourse, or Exchange; near which the "Nabob of Finance"
alighted, and was going away without paying. The driver stopped him, and
demanded his fare. Rothschild felt in his pocket, but he had not a "red
cent" of change. The driver was very wroth:

"Well, what did you get _in_ for, if you could not pay? You must have
_known_, that you had no money!"

"I am Baron Rothschild!" exclaimed the great capitalist; "and there is my
card!"

The driver threw the card in the gutter: "Never heard of you before," said
the driver, "and don't want to hear of you again. But I want my fare--and I
must _have_ it!"

The great banker was in haste: "I have only an order for a million," he
said. "Give me change;" and he proffered a "coupon" for fifty thousand
francs.

The conductor stared, and the passengers set up a horse-laugh. Just then
an "Agent de Change" came by, and Baron Rothschild borrowed of him the six
sous.

The driver was now seized with a kind of remorseful respect; and turning
to the Money-King, he said:

"If you want ten francs, sir, I don't mind lending them to you on my own
account!"

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"Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings," says the BIBLE, "THOU hast
ordained praise." Whoso reads the following, will feel the force of the
passage.

At an examination of a deaf and dumb institution some years ago in London,
a little boy was asked in writing:

"Who ma