There being transpiration through the skin, it would not be a bad idea to see whether this can not be in some way hindered. The popular method will do very well: smother the flesh as much as possible in feathers. A wandering princess, in some fairy tale, came to a king’s house. The king’s wife, with the curiosity and acuteness proper to her sex, desired to know whether their guest was truly born a princess, and discovered how to solve the question. She put three peas on the young lady’s paillasse, and over them a large feather-bed, and then another, then another—in fact, fifteen feather-beds. Next morning the princess looked pale, and, in answer to inquiries how she had passed the night, said that she had been unable to sleep at all, because the bed had lumps in it. The king’s wife knew then that their guest showed her good breeding. Take this high-born lady for a model. The feathers retain all heat about your body, and stifle the skin so far effectually, that you awake in the morning pervaded by a sense of languor, which must be very agreeable to a person who has it in his mind to be unhealthy. In order to keep a check upon exhalation about your head (which otherwise might have too much the way of Nature), put on a stout, closely-woven night-cap. People who are at the height of cleverness in this respect sleep with their heads under the bed-clothes. Take no rest on a hair-mattress; it is elastic and pleasant, certainly, but it does not encase the body; and therefore you run a risk of not awaking languid. Never wash when you go to bed; you are not going to see any body, and therefore there can be no use in washing. In the morning, wet no more skin than you absolutely must—that is to say, no more than your neighbors will see during the day—the face and hands. So much you may do with a tolerably good will, since it is the other part of the surface of the body, more covered and more impeded in the full discharge of its functions, which has rather the more need of ablution; it is therefore fortunate that you can leave that other part unwashed. Five minutes of sponging and rubbing over the whole body in the morning would tend to invigorate the system, and would send you with a cheerful glow to the day’s business or pleasure. Avoid it by all means, if you desire to be unhealthy. Let me note here, that in speaking of the poor, we should abstain from ceding to them an exclusive title, as “the Great Unwashed.” Will you, Mr. N. or M., retire into your room and strip? Examine your body; is it clean—was it sponged this morning—is there no dirt upon it any where? If it be not clean, if it was not sponged, if water would look rather black after you had enjoyed a thorough scrub in it, then is it not obvious that you yourself take rank among the Great Unwashed? By way of preserving a distinction between them and us, I even think it would be no bad thing were we to advocate the washing of the poor.