INKY PEN.--We sympathise much with your anxiety, but we can only say to
you as we say to all who wish to succeed in literary work, you must try
and try again for a long time before you will succeed, and success is
not even then assured.
E. MC. T.--Your sedentary life as a dressmaker does not agree with you.
You should try to take more exercise and warming food. Dress in woollen
under-clothing, and rub the body well in the morning with a cloth dipped
in salt and water.
VIOLET VERNON.--We have heard that the homoeopathists have a special
cure for such little excrescences.
TOM-TIT writes very well. The 2nd of January, 1865, was a Monday.
NYMPHIA ALLA.--Disease or weakness of the nervous system is often,
unhappily, an inheritance from our parents. Not that they may be nervous
themselves, but that their course of life--late hours, over-taxed brain,
poor living, fast living, drink, or bad constitution, etc., result, one
or more, in bequeathing a wretched inheritance of weak nerves, not
positive disease, to their children. Live generously, go to bed early,
be much in the open air, and take a tonic if required, and by a doctor's
advice.
ALONE.--We sympathise with you, and approve of the sentiments you
express in verse; but the latter is not even correct in composition,
quite apart from its lack of any ideality, which is inseparable from
true poetry. No sentence should be divided (excepting as a joke in a
burlesque piece) between two lines thus--
"But 'what' He was preparing _for
Him_ was not on earth; it was where"
B. W. complains of "taking fits of laughter into her head." Evidently,
she has apartments to let in that repository. In any case, it is well
that she should find so much to entertain her and feel so bright and
happy. This state of things will only change too soon.
FIDDLESTICKS.--Your verses have been written without due knowledge of
metrical composition.
MATY GERTY.--We are glad to hear that you have rosy cheeks. Surely you
would not like to look like a washed-out, pasty-faced, sickly little
girl? Young folks often get spots in the face from eating too fast,
swallowing half-masticated food, and indulging in too much jam and sugar
and "lollypops." By this means they spoil their teeth as well as their
skin.
GLADYS.--Your neck should be examined by a good surgeon. You may have
broken some small tendons, and need to be bandaged. It might be
desirable to go to one of our first-class hospitals, and so get the
opinion of more than one experienced surgeon. You write a pretty hand.
On no account change it to the coarse "park-paling" style of writing
which so many girls affect to look "strong-minded." They do not take us
in by it!
VERY GRATEFUL WOMAN.--Homoeopathic doctors give vegetable
medicines--not minerals. The principle of the system is "like cures
like." Allopaths give drugs of a directly opposite character to the
disease, instead of that which, taken in health and in different
proportions, would produce the disease to be cured.
[Illustration]
L. M. O.--The famous Library of Alexandria was burnt by the Saracens in
642 A.D. It was a union of two collections. One was made by the
Ptolemies, and the other was that of Pergamus, formed by Eumenes, and
given by Mark Antony to Cleopatra. Eumenes was a chief officer in the
army of Alexander, and well worthy to succeed him, as he did.
[Illustration: