"It is excellent," as the poet says, "to have a giant's thirst; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant." And not only "tyrannous" but short-sighted. For the law of compensation is one of the first edicts of Nature. The same beneficent hand which provides the simple fruits of the earth for the delectation of man, furnishes also the slug and the wasp, to see that he doesn't get too much. Our friend the dog is deprived of the power of articulation, but he has a tail which can be wagged at the speed of 600 revolutions to the minute. And the man who overtaxes the powers of his inner mechanism during the hours of darkness is certain to feel the effects, to be smitten of conscience, and troubled of brain, when he awakes, a few hours later on. As this is not a medical treatise it would be out of place to analyse at length the abominable habit which the human brain and stomach have acquired, of acting and reacting on each other; suffice it to say that there is no surer sign of the weakness and helplessness of poor, frail, sinful, fallen humanity than the obstinacy with which so many of us will, for the sake of an hour or two's revelry, boldly bid for five times the amount of misery and remorse. And this more especially applies to a life on the ocean wave. The midshipmite who over-estimates his swallowing capacity is no longer "mast-headed" next morning; but the writer has experienced a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal, ere the effects of a birthday party on the previous night had been surmounted; and the effects of "mast-heading" could hardly have been less desirable. In that most delightful work for the young, Dana's _Two years before the Mast_, we read: "Our forecastle, as usual after a liberty-day, was a scene of tumult all night long, from the drunken ones. They had just got to sleep toward morning, when they were turned up with the rest, and kept at work all day in the water, carrying hides, their heads aching so that they could hardly stand. This is sailors' pleasure." Dana himself was ordered up aloft, to reef "torpsles," on his first morning at sea; and he had probably had some sort of a farewell carouse, 'ere quitting Boston. And the present writer upon one occasion--such is the irony of fate--was told off to indite a leading article on "Temperance" for an evening journal, within a very few hours of the termination of a "Derby" banquet. But how shall we alleviate the pangs? How make that dreadful "day after" endurable enough to cause us to offer up thanks for being still allowed to live? Come, the panacea, good doctor!