It is the easiest thing under heaven to be sick, if you can afford it. What it costs some rich men for family sickness per annum, would keep all the children in "a poor neighborhood" in "vittels" and clothes the year round. When old Cauliflower took sick, once in a long life-time, he was prevailed upon to send for Dr. Borax, and it was some weeks before Cauliflower got down stairs again. At the end of the year Dr. Borax sent in his bill; the amount gave Cauliflower spasms in his pocket-book, and threatened a whole year's profits with strangulation. "Doctor," says Cauliflower, "that bill of yours is all-fired steep, isn't it?" "No, sir," says Borax; "your case was a dangerous case--I never raised a man from the grave with such difficulty, in all my practice!" "But, fifty-three _calls_, doctor, one hundred and six dollars." "Exactly--two dollars a visit, sir," said the urbane doctor. "And twenty-seven prescriptions, four plasters, &c.--eighty-one dollars!" "One hundred and eighty-seven dollars, sir." "Well," says Cauliflower, "this may be all very _well_ for people who can af-_ford_ it, but I can't; there's your money, doctor, but I'll bet you won't catch me sick as that again--_soon!_" The Race of the Aldermen. In 183-, it chanced in the big city of New York, that the aldermen elect were a sort of _tie_; that is, so many whigs and so many democrats. Such a thing did not occur often, the democracy usually having the supremacy. They generally had things pretty much all their own way, and distributed their favors among their partizans accordingly. The whigs at length _tied_ them, and the _locos_, beholding with horror and misgivings, the new order of things which was destined to turn out many a holder of fat office, many a pat-riot overflowing with democratic patriotism, whose devotion to the cause of the country was manifest in the tenacity with which he clung to his place, were extremely anxious to devise ways and means to keep the whigs at bay; and as the day drew near, when the assembled Board of Aldermen should have their sitting at the City Hall, various _dodges_ were proposed by the locos to out-vote the whigs, in questions or decisions touching the distribution of places, and appointment of men to fill the various stations of the new municipal government. "I have it--I've got it!" exclaimed a round and jolly alderman of a democratic ward. "To-night the Board meets--we stand about eight and eight--this afternoon, let two of us invite two of the whigs, Alderman H---- and Alderman J----, out to a dinner at Harlem, get H---- and J---- tight as wax, and then we can slip off, take our conveyance, come in, and vote the infernal whigs just where we want them!" "Capital! prime! Ha, ha, ha!" says one. "First rate! elegant! ha, ha, ha!" shouts another. "Ha, ha! haw! haw! he, he, he!" roared all the locys.