The attempts to render the child accustomed to the air and to cold, must never be neglected, for it will probably happen, as he grows older, that from the impossibility of carefully watching him on all occasions, he will at times be accidentally exposed to the influence of atmospheric vicissitudes.

WATERING-PLACE SNOBS.

HOTEL CONVENTIONALITY, WITH SPECIMENS OF EACH GENUS AND SPECIES.

Is there be one place this side of a beggar's opera and dinner-party, as described in the graphic page of some European traveller, that presents to the observer a complete microcosm of humanity, it is an American watering-place. A season at Saratoga, Newport, or Cape May, opens as large a page of nature as the moderate intellect of an ordinary observer can well digest during the next year's existence; and if its owner do not lose his individuality, and find his skull and its contents gradually turned into a porridge-pot, and give occasion to some of our pathological brethren for a post-mortem and certificate of "Ramollisement Cerebri "* he may thank Heaven for blunting his perceptive faculties, and saving his carcass from so high a preferment before the kind offices of an undertaker, or the keeper of a lunatic asylum, at the least. A periodical mania seizes most of our citizens at the approach of the dog-days, and as soon as the corporation let loose the dread ministers of the law on the unfortunate canine family, two legged Puppydom takes the alarm, and rushes from the city, like one of their four-legged brethren, alarmed at the novel appendage of a tin-kettle to his caudal extremity, and a free course up Broadway.

We have made this extraordinary moral affection the sub

Softening of the brain.

ject of considerable observation, during the last twenty years of our practice, and have studied the epidemic, as it has appeared in various parts of our country; and as the disease has become exceedingly common and of unvaried periodical return, the observations made on some of the victims may not be without interest to our readers. It is true, our experience has not been very extensive at those more notorious places, where the infection has been attended with most alarming symptoms, because we have found it both necessary and agreeable, during the latter portion of our professional life, to share our duties and observations with two associates, for whose safety we have a little more consideration than our more enthusiastic brethren usually have for themselves. The disease is not generally fatal to them, not only because they are mostly free from the complication of pecuniary congestion, but because their morals and manners, in their latter days, generally lend peculiar force to that elegantly illustrative apothegm-"I'ts hard to spoil" a-a-ah-the albuminous contents of a calciferous and ovicular receptacle of gallinaceous vitality usually called by the vulgar-an egg, Excuse us, sweet reader, for the coarse allusion, and give us credit in the very introduction of the proverb to such refined notice, for perfect liberality in including ourselves in the category; for, with a Frenchman's fondness for fresh eggs (not old doctors), truth and our glass compels the assurance, we are no chicken; indeed, we think, dear child, when you have allowed the fringes of those heavenly eyes to droop from their marble sills over the windows of the soul, till you come to the end of this miserable article, you will be convinced you are listening to the crowing of an old cock. Pray heaven, dearest, you do not in that malicious little head, mentally invest us with one of the more envied attributes of that strutting country representative of the true watering-place gentleman: we are not omnivorous in our admiration of the gentler sex;

although we confess a strong penchant for Turkey, we usually take it cooked; for we swear to you, dear children, however disagreeably the confession may revive former delightful and youthful memories, we have not of late years had our vanity flattered by much attention from your sex. Indeed, upon occasion of the last favor that gladdened our eyes, when we fondly hoped to regale our nose with the delightful odor of an enticing bouquet, delivered in the very presence of one who well knows our amiability, we were greeted with the flavor of rue and wormwood, cunningly disposed by some naughty little fingers, around-a dead hornet True it is, however, dearest, we always suspected it came in return for one we confess at least to have seen, before it was sent to our young friend, containing a mouse; -but the little creature was only designed to typify gentle innocence, and was sent in a freak of invincible jocularity; two or three having reached the hands of the same lovely creature, done up as wedding-cake, and if truth be all told, a couple as oyster patties. Besides, Shakspere says in his Twelfth Night, "true, my mouse of virtue," and in Hamlet it is bestowed by the king as a term of endearment on the newly-widowed queen-though not too well deserved, it would seem, by that devoted lady-as illustrative of her virtue.

Well, then, our amiability and experience being taken for granted, we will enter upon our investigation of the temporary diseases of the different classes, occupants of

with now and then the more interesting points of an individual. But first, en passant: as we are known to be so thoroughly pachydermatous, and utterly unsusceptible of all the gentler emotions, we never had the slightest reason to expect attention from any of the individual specimens we describe. We merely view them as a class of humanity, worthy the study of the reader of such a unique volume as is here presented-and with no desire to cultivate an

unamiable dissatisfaction with any of the works of natureparticularly that puffing genus, the batrachia, or its human. synonym, the snob.

The first point that strikes the observation of the practical surgeon, as he dismounts from his vehicle, covered and begrimed with dust, is the extraordinary prevalence of the spinal affections, and near-sightedness; the next, the contemplative and resigned expression of a number of gentlemen, usually in black, walking solitary and alone up and down the piazza, with their hands behind their backs.

The first of these affections is an awful and hopeless disease, very afflictive to the genus snob, wherever found-and familiarly known to surgeons as the backward curvature of the spine. It is usually the consequence of pecuniary repletion, and is rarely observed before the patient's fortieth year, unless in times of speculation, when it has been known to occur at the twenty-fifth. Occasionally it is hereditary, when the abdominal projection that seems to have been intended by nature as a counterpoise to the backward curvature of the spine, is accompanied with the unfortunate -condition of cerebral atrophy; do not suppose, however, that the patient is destitute of brains; a little conversation with the unfortunate individual will soon convince you of that extraordinary yet common phenomenon of the transposition of the cerebral and abdominal contents, so well known to the immortal physiologist of Avon, when he makes one of his heroes say:

"You carry your brains in your belly, and your g-s in your head."

The seniors amongst these afflicted individuals, or as they are sometimes affectionately called by their dutiful progeny, "the governors," are remarkably tenacious of their position, as they fondly term their acknowledged height upon the ladder of snobdom; this is graduated entirely by the amount of their fortune: nothing under $100,000 and a carriage,