I can certify that the above List correctly, and even moderately, represents Mrs. Bullwinkle's daily bill of fare, for one month. I can assert, from my own observation, that every dish, at every hour of the day, which went up to her full, invariably came down from her empty. Mrs. Bullwinkle was not a wasteful eater. She could fully appreciate, in roast meat, for example, the great value of "lean;" but she was not, on that account, insensible to the humbler merits of fat, skin, and "outside." All--emphatically, all--was fish that came to her net; and the net itself, as I can personally testify, was never once over-weighted and never out of order. I have watched, in the case of this perfectly unparalleled human cormorant, for symptoms of apoplexy, or at least of visible repletion, with a dreadful and absorbing interest; and have, on no occasion, been rewarded by making the smallest discovery. Mrs. Bullwinkle was never, while in my service, even so much as partially intoxicated. Her face was never flushed; her articulation was never thickened; her brain was never confused; her movements were never uncertain. After the breakfast, the two morning snacks, and the dinner,--all occurring within the space of six hours,--she could move about the room with unimpeded freedom of action; could keep my wife and the baby in a state of the strictest discipline; could curtsy magnificently, when the unoffending master, whom she was eating out of house and home, entered the room, preserving her colour, her equilibrium, and her staylaces, when she sank down and when she swelled up again, without the vestige of an apparent effort. During the month of her devastating residence under my roof, she had two hundred and forty-eight meals, including the snacks; and she went out of the house no larger and no redder than she came in. After the statement of one such fact as that, further comment is superfluous. I leave this case in the hands of the medical and the married public. I present it, as a problem, to physiological science. I offer it, as a warning, to British husbands with limited incomes. While I write these lines, while I give my married countrymen this friendly caution, my wife is weeping over the tradesmen's bills; my children are on half-allowance of food; my cook is worked off her legs; my purse is empty. Young husbands, and persons about to marry, commit to memory the description here given of my late monthly nurse! Avoid a tall and dignified woman, with a flowing style of conversation and impressively ladylike manners! Beware, my struggling friends, my fellow-toilers along the heavily-taxed highways of domestic happiness--beware of Mrs. Bullwinkle! FOOTNOTES: