a sleep; and when we open our eyes, the opaque has become transparent.  We split every day in two by a nap in the afternoon.  Going to take that somniferous interstice, we say to the servants, “Do not call me for anything.  If the house takes fire, first get the children out and my private papers; and when the roof begins to fall in call me.”  Through such fanaticism we have thus far escaped the hot axle.

Somebody ought to be congratulated—­I do not know who, and so I will shake hands all around—­on the fact that the health of the country seems improving.  Whether Dio Lewis, with his gymnastic clubs, has pounded to death American sickness, or whether the coming here of many English ladies with their magnificent pedestrian habits, or whether the medicines in the apothecary shops through much adulteration have lost their force, or whether the multiplication of bathtubs has induced to cleanliness people who were never washed but once, and that just after their arrival on this planet, I cannot say.  But sure I am that I never saw so many bright, healthy-faced people as of late.

Our maidens have lost the languor they once cultivated, and walk the street with stout step, and swing the croquet mallet with a force that sends the ball through two arches, cracking the opposing ball with great emphasis.  Our daughters are not ashamed to culture flower beds, and while they plant the rose in the ground a corresponding rose blooms in their own cheek.

But we need another proclamation of emancipation.  The human locomotive goes too fast.  Cylinder, driving-boxes, rock-shaft, truck and valve-gear need to “slow up.”  Oh! that some strong hand would unloose the burdens from our over-tasked American life, that there might be fewer bent shoulders, and pale cheeks, and exhausted lungs, and quenched eyes, the law, and medicine, and theology less frequently stopped in their glorious progress, because of the hot axle!

CHAPTER IX.

Beefsteak for ministers.

There have been lately several elaborate articles remarking upon what they call the lack of force and fire in the clergy.  The world wonders that, with such a rousing theme as the gospel, and with such a grand work as saving souls, the ministry should ever be nerveless.  Some ascribe it to lack of piety, and some to timidity of temperament.  We believe that in a great number of cases it is from the lack of nourishing food.  Many of the clerical brotherhood are on low diet.  After jackets and sacks have been provided for the eight or ten children of the parsonage, the father and mother must watch the table with severest economy.  Coming in suddenly upon the dinner-hour of the country clergyman, the housewife apologizes for what she calls “a picked-up” dinner, when, alas! it is nearly always picked up.