I may observe, in limmony, that you will soon discover me to be a well edicated woman. I have lived a long life, and have always picked up knowledge fast, taking four meals of it a day. Especially, you will find that my medical attainments are considerable. I’m not one of your women who go costing their husbands a whole till-full of money every year for doctor’s bills. As a mother of a family—and—though you wouldn’t believe it, Mr. Editor, if you was to look at me—I’ve had as many as eighteen,—I felt it my duty, as the mother of a family, to acquire the knowledge that was necessary for the preservation of my children’s lives. I have bought or borrowed a large number of medical books, and studied them so well, that if the dear children had been spared me long enough,—whereas thirteen died young, and one an infant, which was quite owing to the nurse having forgot to give it its Godfrey three nights running,—if they had all lived, I should have been surrounded by a very healthy family, and they would have owed to me, every one of them, their blooming looks. Of the five that survive, Edward is delicate, and Tom is rather daft, but the other three are in strong health, and prove what a blessing it was their mother took such care of them. Some one of you gentlemen has been a writing about Lucifer-matches. Lucifers, indeed! Is that your improvement of the people? Yah! If folks were wise they would send Lucifer his matches back, and not be indebted to him any longer for them. None of us ever lost our jawbones over a tinder-box in my young days. But you must have improvements. Don’t you know that you pay for civilisation with health. Look at me. I am eighty-two; but we used flint and steel when I was young. Turn to the British and Foreign Medical Review of a few years ago, there you will see what I mean. There’s an account in it, of the new disease begotten by lucifer-matches; by the phosphorus. It’s this: a worker in the manufactory has a hollow tooth, it generally begins there, resembles tooth-ache; then there is inflammation about it; the periosteum of the lower jaw becomes inflamed; the bone dies: a man is recorded to have picked his lower jawbone out of his chin as we pulled winkles out of their shells, when winkles were eaten, in the good old times. It’s true that forewarned is forearmed. Great care is taken in lucifer factories on a large scale; those who work over the phosphorus have their mouths shielded, I believe, and so on: but then, what a thing it is! Here’s your march of improvement! A new luxury, a new disease.