E. Mc. T.—Your sedentary life as a dressmaker does not agree with you. You should try to take more exercise and warming food. Dress in woollen under-clothing, and rub the body well in the morning with a cloth dipped in salt and water.
Violet Vernon.—We have heard that the homœopathists have a special cure for such little excrescences.
Tom-Tit writes very well. The 2nd of January, 1865, was a Monday.
Nymphia Alla.—Disease or weakness of the nervous system is often, unhappily, an inheritance from our parents. Not that they may be nervous themselves, but that their course of life—late hours, over-taxed brain, poor living, fast living, drink, or bad constitution, etc., result, one or more, in bequeathing a wretched inheritance of weak nerves, not positive disease, to their children. Live generously, go to bed early, be much in the open air, and take a tonic if required, and by a doctor's advice.
Alone.—We sympathise with you, and approve of the sentiments you express in verse; but the latter is not even correct in composition, quite apart from its lack of any ideality, which is inseparable from true poetry. No sentence should be divided (excepting as a joke in a burlesque piece) between two lines thus—
"But 'what' He was preparing for
Him was not on earth; it was where"
B. W. complains of "taking fits of laughter into her head." Evidently, she has apartments to let in that repository. In any case, it is well that she should find so much to entertain her and feel so bright and happy. This state of things will only change too soon.
Fiddlesticks.—Your verses have been written without due knowledge of metrical composition.
Maty Gerty.—We are glad to hear that you have rosy cheeks. Surely you would not like to look like a washed-out, pasty-faced, sickly little girl? Young folks often get spots in the face from eating too fast, swallowing half-masticated food, and indulging in too much jam and sugar and "lollypops." By this means they spoil their teeth as well as their skin.
Gladys.—Your neck should be examined by a good surgeon. You may have broken some small tendons, and need to be bandaged. It might be desirable to go to one of our first-class hospitals, and so get the opinion of more than one experienced surgeon. You write a pretty hand. On no account change it to the coarse "park-paling" style of writing which so many girls affect to look "strong-minded." They do not take us in by it!