the very strongest stimulant.

We do not make words by

adding a repetition of a letter to strengthen them, nor should we say that a man is dee-dead if he is quite defunct. But the stupid, vulgar, odious word is there: no one can understand it; every scholar must abhor it. Scholars cannot coin words, nor remove them: for fifty years or so the ungainly term will defile our language, and then die out, as hundreds of cant words have already done. Other scholars thus explain, in their own fashion, the word Teetotal:-It is simply the word total written with two initial letters-ttotal, ffarranton, &c.—a common practice in the counties which formed part of the old Danelagh, or where the Danes, as in Lancashire, held the land. The provincials sound the first slightly, and hence the printers and reporters made it into a separate syllable. The word was so used before the time of Edward IV.

It is curious that a set of common enthusiasts should have chosen so meaningless, and yet so appropriate a name; but it is characteristic of the English that they did so. Binding themselves under that one foolish but very distinctive appellation, they went to work with a will, and achieved wonders. Probably few modern movements ever did so much real good as teetotalism. Its professors, it is true, shot a great deal lower than their mark; but they reached something. Their success soon intoxicated them more than the spirits which they had renounced. They began to learn chemistry—at least as much of it as served their purpose; and they attracted a number of medical Balaams, who went out in great force, and, much more faithful than the original prophet, cursed the

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man's home happy, and, with all its disadvantages, enable it to contrast favourably with the public-house, is not arrived at without much study.

The number of meals in which the well-fed classes indulge is too large. One at least could be dispensed with, and that one should be luncheon. The great sportsman who wrote under the name of "Nimrod" was for limiting the meals of young men to two—a good breakfast and a good dinner ; and this rule might be well adhered to for people in health. An adult in full health, writes an authority, requires two meals daily, and often, without prejudice, partakes of two more. Women, who are more delicately organized, eat sparingly, and require three meals in the day. Modern civilization seems to require that people should not be too long without eating. Herbert Mayo gives nine hours. A person, says he, who breakfasts at nine, should not dine later than six. But other eminent physicians have recommended their patients to eat little and often, so as not to put the stomach to too great a task in providing gastric juice for digestion.

Hot suppers are most unwholesome, because the meat is not digested before sleep dreams and nocturnal disturbances are the consequence. During eating strong mental excitement should be avoided. When at meals the motto "Age quod agis" is as applicable as at any piece of work. Do what you are about, and do it well. Think of eating and masticating: throw your mind into the matter. Nothing can be worse than for the town man to stick a newspaper or an exciting novel against a cruet-frame, and read as he eats.

This way of partaking of toast and sentiment, and swallowing hot tea and strong politics, is decidedly injurious.

Lastly, temperance and soberness cannot be more strongly inculcated by the divine than they are by the doctor. There is not one eminent man who has written for years who has not traced more than half the diseases of humanity to the gorging propensities of man. At a good school a little fellow who devours his tarts in secret, or who makes too much of his school treat, gets marked down as a glutton, and is treated accordingly. One excess is as bad as another: every meal which is superfluous is a sin; it is a sin against that bountiful Providence which supplies enough for all, but too much for none. That man who eats enough for two, robs one; and punishment most surely follows. If we wish to see how odious gluttony and excess are to a highly intellectual mind, we have only to read that passage in Dante's great work wherein gluttons are punished, and, moreover, to remember the feast of Dives and the starvation of Lazarus; and then we shall, like Socrates, EAT TO LIVE, and not LIVE TO EAT.

ON PUMP-HANDLES;

OR,

THE GREAT TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT.

HE great temperance movement, which was one in the right direction (for we English were desperately hard drinkers), has not only taken away

our reproach, but it has added another word to the English language. From it arose, we believe, that extra branch of temperance men, those who would go to extremes -the teetotallers. Their name is the word of which we speak, and possibly no one knows its derivation. We have heard it explained in various ways. Webster calls it a cant word, formed in England from the first two letters of " temperance" and "total," signifying thereby total temperance. We doubt whether he is right. Trench, in his English, Past and Present, does not mention the word. Other people have said that one who stammered invented it: "t-t-t-total abstinence," he asserted, was what he wanted; but this looks very apocryphal. One asserts, after some consideration and study of words, that it is a misspelt word, that it means tea-total abstainer; that is, abstainers to whom tea would be

the very strongest stimulant.

We do not make words by

adding a repetition of a letter to strengthen them, nor should we say that a man is dee-dead if he is quite defunct. But the stupid, vulgar, odious word is there : no one can understand it; every scholar must abhor it. Scholars cannot coin words, nor remove them: for fifty years or so the ungainly term will defile our language, and then die out, as hundreds of cant words have already done. Other scholars thus explain, in their own fashion, the word Teetotal:-It is simply the word total written with two initial letters—ttotal, ffarranton, &c.—a common practice in the counties which formed part of the old Danelagh, or where the Danes, as in Lancashire, held the land. The provincials sound the first & slightly, and hence the printers and reporters made it into a separate syllable. The word was so used before the time of Edward IV.

It is curious that a set of common enthusiasts should have chosen so meaningless, and yet so appropriate a name; but it is characteristic of the English that they did so. Binding themselves under that one foolish but very distinctive appellation, they went to work with a will, and achieved wonders. Probably few modern movements ever did so much real good as teetotalism. Its professors, it is true, shot a great deal lower than their mark; but they reached something. Their success soon intoxicated them more than the spirits which they had renounced. They began to learn chemistry—at least as much of it as served their purpose; and they attracted a number of medical Balaams, who went out in great force, and, much more faithful than the original prophet, cursed the

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