Among the other essays and orations in _Pages from an old Volume of Life_, we find the _Physiology of Walking_, which contains many interesting facts concerning the human wheel, with its spokes and felloes. "Walking," says Doctor Holmes, "is a perpetual falling with a perpetual self-recovery. It is a most complex, violent, and perilous operation, which we divest of its extreme danger only by continual practice from a very early period of life. We find how complex it is when we attempt to analyze it, and we see that we never understood it thoroughly until the time of the instantaneous photograph. We learn how violent it is, when we walk against a post or a door in the dark. We discover how dangerous it is when we slip or trip and come down, perhaps breaking or dislocating our limbs, or overlook the last step of a flight of stairs, and discover with what headlong violence we have been hurling ourselves forward. "Two curious facts are easily proved. First, a man is shorter when he is walking than when at rest. We have found a very simple way of showing this by having a rod or stick placed horizontally, so as to touch the top of the head forcibly, as we stand under it. In walking rapidly beneath it, even if the eyes are shut, the top of the head will not even graze the rod. The other fact is, that one side of a man always tends to outwalk the other side, so that no person can walk far in a straight line, if he is blindfolded. _The Seasons_, and _The Human Body and its Management_, were originally published in the Atlantic Almanac. _Cinders from the Ashes_ gives some exceedingly interesting reminiscences. Richard Henry Dana, the schoolboy, is described by Doctor Holmes as ruddy, sturdy, quiet and reserved; and of Margaret Fuller he says, "Sitting on the girls' benches, conspicuous among the schoolgirls of unlettered origin, by that look which rarely fails to betray hereditary and congenital culture, was a young person very nearly of my own age. She came with the reputation of being 'smart,' as we should have called it; clever, as we say nowadays. Her air to her schoolmates was marked by a certain stateliness and distance; as if she had other thoughts than theirs, and was not of them. She was a great student and a great reader of what she used to call 'náw-véls;' I remember her so well as she appeared at school and later, that I regret that she had not been faithfully given to canvas or marble in the day of her best looks. None know her aspect who have not seen her living. Margaret, as I remember her at school and afterwards, was tall, fair complexioned, with a watery, aquamarine lustre in her light eyes, which she used to make small, as one does who looks at the sunshine.