in stuffs, colors, frippery, and flounce. And to
wear rings in their ears. If ladies have good taste they can not vex us;
and that any of them can have bad taste, who shall hint? Their stays they
will abide by, as they love hysterics; them I have mentioned. I have
before also gone out of my way to speak of certain humps carried by women
on their backs, which are not healthy or unhealthy--who shall say what they
are? Are these humps allegorical? Our wives and daughters perhaps wish to
hint that they resemble camels in their patience; camels who bear their
burden through a desert world, which we, poor folk, should find it quite
impossible to travel through without them.

X. Fresh Air.

Philosophers tell us that the breath of man is poisonous; that when
collected in a jar it will kill mice, but when accumulated in a room it
will kill men. Of this there are a thousand and one tales. I decline
alluding to the Black Hole of Calcutta, but will take a specimen dug up by
some sanitary gardener from Horace Walpole's letters. In 1742 a set of
jolly Dogberries, virtuous in their cups, resolved that every woman out
after dark ought to be locked up in the round-house. They captured
twenty-six unfortunates, and shut them in with doors and windows fastened.
The prisoners exhausted breath in screaming. One poor girl said she was
worth eighteenpence, and cried that she would give it gladly for a cup of
water. Dogberry was deaf. In the morning four were brought out dead, two
dying, and twelve in a dangerous condition. This is an argument in favor
of the new police. I don't believe in ventilation; and will undertake
here, in a few paragraphs, to prove it nonsense.

At the very outset, let us take the ventilation-mongers on their own
ground. People of this class are always referring us to nature. Very well,
we will be natural. Do you believe, sir, that the words of that dear lady,
when she said she loved you everlastingly, were poisonous air rendered
sonorous by the action of a larynx, tongue, teeth, palate, and lips? No,
indeed; ladies, at any rate, although they claim a double share of what
the cherubs want--and, possibly, these humps, now three times spoken of,
are the concealed and missing portions of the cherubim torn from them by
the fair sex in some ancient struggle. There, now, I am again shipwrecked
on the wondrous mountains. I was about to say, that ladies, who, in some
things, surpass the cherubs, equal them in others;