But below and far beyond this class of persons, there are the innumerable ones who are born into a world of poverty and vice. It is their inheritance from long lines of ancestry; they are crippled from the beginning and have but half a chance in securing or retaining the prizes of health and success. In the great contest of life the weaker go to the wall. That term so commonly now in use, "the survival of the fittest" in the struggle of life, covers a large ground, and numberless are the tales of suffering, want, and consequent disease which, hidden from the light of day, are known only to the physician or the philanthropist. I hardly need refer to the sanitary surroundings of those portions of our large cities, and those of Europe, which are occupied by the poorer classes of society: the impure air from overcrowding, the effect of which upon the delicate tissues of the nervous system is deleterious in the highest degree; the lack of all facilities for bathing; the insufficient, irregular, and often unwholesome food-supply; the habit of drunkenness from the use of alcohol in some of its worst preparations, and habits of daily tippling which keeps the brain in a state of constant excitement; together with the immoral practices which grow out of such surroundings and habits of life,--all tend strongly in one direction. By going through some of the hospitals for the insane in the vicinity of New York, or those which are the recipients of the mental wrecks which drift out of the lower grades of society, in the great manufacturing towns and cities of this country or of England, one may gain some more vivid conceptions of the influences which expend themselves upon the nervous system among these poorer classes of society. We have seen, in the spring season of the year, the trees of an orchard white with unnumbered blossoms. Myriads on myriads feed every passing breeze with delicious odors for a day, and then drop to the ground. And when the fruit is formed from a very few only of these innumerable blossoms on the trees, a limited number only of the whole attain to maturity and perfection, while the ground is strewn with the windfalls and the useless. Why the one goes on to maturity, while the other perishes so prodigally and so soon, we may not say with certainty, but doubtless it is due to some slight degree of advantage in the starting of the voyage; it may be a moment or an hour of time, or a particle of nourishment, but to whatsoever cause it may be due, it is sufficient, and there is no remedy.