drunkenness can hardly be more degrading to rational human beings, than the crazy toddlings and twaddlings of a bemused mind, whether only maudlin with infinitesimal doses of quackery, or rampant to mad staggers with the _lush_ious compounds and Devil’s Elixirs of the Mesmerian Distillery. Take the wildest freaks of the most fuddled, muddled, bepuddled soaker,--such as “trying to light his pipe at a pump,”--attempting to wind up a plug with his watch-key,--or requesting, from a damp bed in the gutter, to be tucked in,--and are they a bit, or a whit, or a jot, or a what-not, more absurd, more extravagant, or more indicative of imbecility of reason, than the vagary of a somnambulist, gravely going through the back-gammon of reading Back’s Journal, or a back-number of the Retrospective Review, through the back of his head? [Illustration: “I WAS TOLD I SHOULD FIND HERE SOME TRAP ROCKS!”] In case the Great Water Companies alluded to should think proper to adopt the foregoing suggestions, the following genuine letters are placed very much at their service, as materials to be worked up into Tracts:-- (COPY.) _To Mr. Robert_ HOLLAND, _Linen-Draper, No. 194, Tottenham Court Road, London._ DEAR BOB, Hoping you are well, and well-doing, we have heard such wonderful accounts in our parts lately about animal magnetizing, without any clear notion what it is. My own notion is, it must be something new of my Lord Spenser’s--Althorp as was--who was always very curious about his beasts. Others do say the Duke of Bedford, with a fresh cattle show--nobody knows. Now you are just at the fountain-head to learn, and as most of us down here is more or less engaged in breeding stock, it would be a main thing to be put up to the secret at its first start. [Illustration: WRINGING OUT THE OLD YEAR.] Also whether it is expensive to buy--and who found it out--and if likely to do away with oilcake and mangel-wurzel, and such like particulars. Praise be blest, we are all stout and hearty, except your poor aunt, who died three year ago. Which is all the news at present from, Dear Bob, Your loving Uncle, REUBEN OXENHAM. (COPY.) _To Mr. Reuben_ OXENHAM, _Grazier, Grasslands, near Lincolnshire._ DEAR UNCLE, I was agreeably surprised by your breaking silence; for I had made up my mind you was a distrest farmer gone off swan hopping (excuse the joke) to Swan River, or to get settled among the Dutch boars and lions at the Cape of Good Hope. Thank heaven such is not the case; though damped with my dear aunt’s going off. I little thought, poor soul! the why and wherefore my goose three Christmases ago was the last! But we must all be cut off some day or other, which is a religious consolation for the remnants that are left behind. [Illustration: SWAN-HOPPING.]