Now, putting dyspepsia on one side, I appeal to my fellow-sufferers, and ask them, Is there any torture to be compared with the infliction of corns? Headache?--take a little medicine and lie down. Toothache?-- have it out. Earache?--try hot onion. Opodeldoc for rheumatism; chlorodyne for tic; colchicum for gout. There's a remedy for nearly every pain and ache; but what will you do for your corns? Ordinary sufferings come only now and then, but corns shoot, stab, twitch, and agonise continually. What is the remedy? Plasters are puffs; bandages empty promises; the knife threatens tetanus; caustic only makes them black and smarting; while chiropodists--. Mention them not in my hearing, lest my vengeance fall upon your devoted head. Where can you put your feet to be safe--at home or abroad? Why, your very boots are sworn enemies, and the battle at putting on or pulling off makes the thought of the operation produce beads of cold perspiration upon one's ample brow. Who can be surprised at one's lying long in bed of a morning when tortures await, and you know that just outside the door, by the side of the large white jug whose water grows less and less steamy, there stand two hollow leather cylinders loaded with fearful pains to be discharged at your devoted feet. There isn't a sensible shoemaker on the face of the earth. I've tried them one after the other until I'm tired of them. One recommends calf, another kid, another dog-skin, and another "pannus corium," and my feet are worse than ever. I won't believe in them any more, though they do show me lasts made to my feet, and insult me with hideous nubbly, bunkly abortions carved in wood, which they say represent my feet--my feet, those suffering locomotives. I'll take to sandals, or else follow the advice of the Countess de Noailles, and go barefoot like the old hen in the nursery rhyme. I could suffer the bodily pain if it were not for the mental accompaniment, and the total want of pity and compassion shown by people. Only the other day, going down one of those quiet cab-stand streets, one of the idle wretches that I intended to engage shouted out to his companions,-- "I say, old 'uns, here's Peter Pindar a-coming." "Who?" shouted another. "Cove as turned pilgrim, and went with peas in his shoes," cried Number One; while, writhing with agony, and gnashing my teeth, I shook my stick at the rascal. "You scoundrel," I cried, "it's my corn,--it's not peas."