Fever is bad still. I had another attack of dengue, but have got nearly over it. I find lemon-juice the best remedy. All over town there are little white notices pasted on the lamp-posts or the pillars of piazzas, bearing the dismal words:—
Décédé
Ce matin, à 3½ heures
Julien
Natif de ——,
and so on. The death notices are usually surmounted by an atrocious cut of a weeping widow sitting beneath a weeping willow—with a huge mausoleum in the background. Yellow fever deaths occur every day close by. Somebody is advocating firing off cannon as a preventive. This plan of shooting Yellow Jack was tried in ’53 without success. It brings on rain; but a rainy day always heralds an increase of the plague. You will see by the Item’s tabulated record that there is a curious periodicity in the increase. It might be described by a line like this—
You have doubtless seen the records of pulsations made by a certain instrument, for detecting the rapidity of blood-circulation. The fever actually appears to have a pulsation of graduated increase like that of a feverish vein. I think this demonstrates a regularity in the periods of germ incubation,—affected, of course, more or less by atmospheric changes.
Hope you will have your musical talks republished in book form. Send us Golden Hours once in a while. It will always have a warm notice in the Item. Yours in much hurry, with promise of another epistle soon.