effect--while the piano-forte, with such instruments as have _no_
continuity of sound, has just the reverse. The finest piano-forte
playing will damage the sick, while an air, like "Home, sweet home," or
"Assisa a piè d'un salice," on the most ordinary grinding organ, will
sensibly soothe them--and this quite independent of association.


FOOTNOTES:

[1]
[Sidenote: Burning of the crinolines.]

Fortunate it is if her skirts do not catch fire--and if the nurse does
not give herself up a sacrifice together with her patient, to be burnt
in her own petticoats. I wish the Registrar-General would tell us the
exact number of deaths by burning occasioned by this absurd and hideous
custom. But if people will be stupid, let them take measures to protect
themselves from their own stupidity--measures which every chemist
knows, such as putting alum into starch, which prevents starched
articles of dress from blazing up.


[Sidenote: Indecency of the crinolines.]

I wish, too, that people who wear crinoline could see the indecency of
their own dress as other people see it. A respectable elderly woman
stooping forward, invested in crinoline, exposes quite as much of her
own person to the patient lying in the room as any opera dancer does on
the stage. But no one will ever tell her this unpleasant truth.