_Gents:--How d'ye do?_ I've just had a good long pull at the titty, and have got on a clean warm diaper; and feeling pretty comfortable, I think I'll give you another small epistle. I'm going to get into trouble--I feel it in my bones. My Ma has quarreled with her old physician, and has employed a new one, young Dr. Pliant--between you and me, I think they should have named him _Verdant_. This new doctor wants to please, so anything the women propose is exactly right. “Don't you think, Doctor,” says one, “that Mrs. T-------- will destroy her health, nursing that fat child?” “Certainly, maam, most unquestionably, Mrs. Helpalong; the strength of the mother being inadequate to the sufficient indevelopment of the ponderous system of meat-gather-upon-its-bones-ativeness of the infant, it consequently follows that the thin-down-to-a-light-alti-tudity of the fill-up-and-get-strong-ative powers of the mother naturally must result.” “I thought so, Doctor,” says Mrs. Helpalong, and this clear-as-mud evidence against my comfort is reiterated to my mother. “Do you really think, Dr. P., that I am endangering my health?” “That depends upon how you feel,” says the doctor. “Why,” says Ma, “I feel as well as ever I did in my life.” “Your system, then,” says the doctor, “is what we call in the south _sui generis_--that is, you can stand nursing, and, consequently, the babe having a tendency to the natural milk which surreptitiously flows, I might say, from the secretive portion of the female _os frontis_ of the breast, it must follow, as a result from these multifarious and indigenous effects, that no danger can ensue from your nursing.” I'm safe as long as my mother keeps in good health; but Lord bless me, should she get ill, I'm a gone _sucker_--this new physician would dose her and me into kingdom come in about a week. I heard quite a discussion about his merits yesterday. Mrs. Enquiry says that he used to be a fiddler about two years ago, but Mrs. Helpalong says it is no such thing--that he always was a gentleman, and taught school before he took up the profession--that he studied regularly a whole season, and took his diploma in the spring;--she sticks to that, Mrs. Helpalong does, and I guess she is about right. Aint my case critical? Bub. NO. VI.-bub's RECEPTION OF A SILVER PAP SPOON.