ports fast locked against foreign traffic three-fourths of each year,
because one day she is scared about the cholera, and the next about the
plague, and next the measles, next the hooping cough, the hives, and the
rash? but she does not mind leonine leprosy and elephantiasis any more
than a great and enlightened civilisation minds freckles. Soap would
soon remove her anxious distress about foreign distempers. The reason
arable land is so scarce in Spain is because the people squander so much
of it on their persons, and then when they die it is improvidently buried
with them.

I should feel obliged to stipulate that Marshal Serrano be reduced to the
rank of constable, or even roundsman. He is no longer fit to be City
Marshal. A man who refused to be king because he was too old and feeble,
is ill qualified to help sick people to the station-house when they are
armed and their form of delirium tremens is of the exuberant and
demonstrative kind.

I should also require that a force be sent to chase the late Queen
Isabella out of France. Her presence there can work no advantage to
Spain, and she ought to be made to move at once; though, poor thing, she
has been chaste enough heretofore--for a Spanish woman.

I should also require that--

I am at this moment authoritatively informed that "The Tribune" did not
mean me, after all. Very well, I do not care two cents.

THE APPROACHING EPIDEMIC

One calamity to which the death of Mr. Dickens dooms this country has not
awakened the concern to which its gravity entitles it. We refer to the
fact that the nation is to be lectured to death and read to death all
next winter, by Tom, Dick, and Harry, with poor lamented Dickens for a
pretext. All the vagabonds who can spell will afflict the people with
"readings" from Pickwick and Copperfield, and all the insignificants who
have been ennobled by the notice of the great novelist or transfigured by
his smile will make a marketable commodity of it now, and turn the sacred
reminiscence to the practical use of procuring bread and butter. The
lecture rostrums will fairly swarm with these fortunates. Already the
signs of it are perceptible. Behold how the unclean creatures are
wending toward the dead lion and gathering to the feast:

"Reminiscences of Dickens." A lecture. By John Smith, who heard him
read eight times.

"Remembrances of Charles Dickens." A lecture. By John Jones, who saw
him once in a street car