42 PROLEGOMENON. 



man-feeders, or rather man-eaters, of the " Health Institute" 

 have thus far followed the example of the frog, and been 

 found quietly concealed in the imid they had kicked up for 

 the purpose of concealing their own rascality, said mud 

 and trouble to be charged to the general account of " Sun- 

 dries" of the institution, and the blunders and misplaced 

 confidences of its unhappy Author. 



And, still further, let it be resolved that, besides the issues 

 of honesty and truth in making a fair pronunciamento and 

 declaration of ends, motives, and designs in terrestrial 

 operations, it is a laudable desire in human nature to 

 set itself right on all questions, to escape the odium of the 

 imputation of softness or verdancy, a veritable eifort of 

 instinct to avoid the calamity of being misunderstood, or 

 split on the rock of fools, or caught, like the hare in the 

 race with the tortoise, sleeping, when the race could have 

 been so easily won, and thus a natural aspiration toward 

 common sense and reason, and in all things of being 

 acquitted of the charge of absolute fatuity or mental 

 obtuseness, not to speak of being made sound on the more 

 delicate questions of justice and righteousness, of honor 

 and manhood. 



And let it be still further resolved, in the mean time, that 

 the prayers of the righteous shall ascend forever, that the 

 kingdom of heaven shall descend in the shape of the per- 

 fectly-published, exquisitely-arranged, and totally-appurte- 

 nanced, Health Institute or Mountain Sanitarium. Taking 

 all past troubles as innocent experiments on the quality of 

 metal, practical jokes on the part of the supernals at the 

 expense of the most amiable soul now working out its sad 

 duration rapidly in the thongs of the flesh, permitting the 

 sand-bags to repose, and "leaving the dead to bury the 

 dead," it is well ever to grasp the hand of the true man, 

 to progress and grow, to trust and fight, to fight and 

 trust, and in the mean time the Mountain and its claims 

 stand a clearly-pronounced excuse for their own appear- 

 ance, a sufficiently patent manifestation of the grace and 



