fectly natural one. After the revelations of his dying adversary, he clutches the foil halfway down the blade and smites the King with this improvised poniard, after forcing to his lips, with fierce, irresistible gesture, the poisoned chalice

"Drink off this potion. Is the union here? Follow my mother!"

The group at the end of the tragedy was peculiarly picturesque and impressive. He totters to the throne, and there, on the raised dais-king at last, if but for a moment-he dominates the scene of carnage and towers triumphant in death above his foes. As his last words drop faltering from his lips, a strain of far-off, triumphant music, announces the approach of Fortinbras. And then-" the rest is silence"-the powerful frame convulsed by the "potent poison," the shadow of death sweeping across the noble features, and the curtain descends upon one of the greatest dramatic impersonations of our century.

The enthusiasm of the audience even surpassed that excited by the Othello. Many of the leading members of the theatrical profession in Paris were present, including Lasalle, of the Grand Opéra (the operatic Hamlet when Faure is ill or absent), and Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt.

Carpeaux the sculptor is dead-a happy release for the poor sufferer, who for years past has been tortured by an internal cancer, as well as tormented by his inability to give shape and form to the multitude of fair visions that thronged his busy brain. Owing to the munificence of the Turkish Prince Stirbey, all that wealth could purchase to alleviate the suffering of his long malady was supplied to him. He will be chiefly remembered by his group of dancers which adorns the façade of the new opera-house, a wild whirl of nude and bacchanalian figures which called forth the severest animadversions from the Parisian press when it was first put in its place, and which was said to embody the mad revelry of the Empire, and to personify its corruption. Some enthusiastic moralist even went so far as to deluge literally with ink the principal personage of the group, the most disheveled of the female dancers. So extensive was the damage that it was thought at first that the stained portions of the statue would have to be sawed out and replaced. But, before such an extreme measure was resorted to, various experiments were tried with a view of removing the stains, and they finally vanished entirely under the application of the vapor of oxalic acid. The perpetrator of the outrage was never discovered. It is now suggested that the group in question should be removed to the sculpture-section of the Luxembourg, as it is liable to be much damaged by the weather in its present exposed position, and that a copy should take its place. Thus does public opinion change with the passage of years.

Gounod met with a severe accident a few days ago, and was seriously injured. He fell down-stairs at the house of his friend M. Oscar Comettant, and dislocated his shoulder, besides breaking some one of the small bones of the arin and bruising himself extensively. His sufferings were at first very great, and the fever ran high, but he is now much better, though he has not yet been moved to his own home.

Louis Reybaud, once well known as a writer of brilliant political satires and novels, is dangerously ill. He is seventy-six years of age. His novel, entitled "Jerôme Paturot's Search for the Best of Republics," created quite a sensation some twenty-five years ago.

One would think that publishers would often be tempted to turn authors in view of the great facility which they would enjoy for bringing their works before the public, and yet instances of their yielding to such temptation are comparatively rare. One of the members of the firm of Glady Brothers (well known to the trade by their splendid edition of " Manon Lescaut," with the much-talked-of preface by Alexandre Dumas), M. Alberic Glady, has written a novel entitled "Jouir" ("To Enjoy"), which is to be issued in a day or two. The announcement modestly states, "As this novel is by one of the firm, we will abstain from all comment respecting it."

A curious work is announced by the Librairie des Bibliophiles; it bears the title of "Secret Memoirs and Authentic Testimony respecting the Fall of Charles X., the Monarchy of July, and the Republic of 1848, accompanied by Remarks on the Share of our Governments in our Revolutions."

Dentu has in press "Russian Nights," by Madame Olympe Audouard. Michael Lévy

the manager and the sociétaires of the Comédie Française. At the close of the dinner, M. Perrin presented to M. Regnier, on behalf of all those present, a gold medal, bearing on one side the head of Molière, and on the other the simple inscription, "To M. Regnier, in remembrance of the Comédie Française-18311875." During his forty-four years of membership, M. Regnier "created" over two hundred and fifty characters, besides appearing in at least as many of the classic or standard répertoire.

There is nothing new in the musical line, except a revival of the "Val d'Andone," by Halévy, at the Opéra Comique. Mademoiselle Chapuy, who made quite a success at the Italian Opera in London last season, and who is a nice little actress with a nice little voice, did very well as the heroine, though she is sadly deficient in strength and compass of voice. LUCY H. HoOPER.

complete edition of the works of J. Autran, of the Academy, containing "The Flute and the Drum," and also a work by Arnould Frémy, with the ominous title of "The Future War."

Some of the papers have been so indiscreet as to publish the plot of Sardou's new comedy entitled "Fereol" (it was called at first " Remorse"), which is now in active preparation at the Gymnase. Fereol de Meiran is the lover of a married lady, Madame de Boismartel, the wife of the President of the Court of Assizes. One night, on secretly leaving her house, Fereol accidentally becomes a witness to a murder committed by Martial, a game-keeper. "If you betray me," cries the murderer, "I shall in my turn betray you." Fereol swears to keep silence. But an innocent man is arrested for the crime and condemned to death. Fereol tries to persuade Madame de Boismartel to elope with him, so that he may reveal the truth to her husband from a distance, but she refuses to leave her daughter. Martial, the real criminal, is at length arrested, and he writes a letter to the president of the court, revealing the secret attachment of his wife and Fereol. But the letter fails to reach its address, and Martial, believing himself to be betrayed by Fereol, hangs himself in his prison. Madame Delaporte is to play the part of Roberta de Boismartel, and M. Worms is to personate Fereol. If the above sketch of the plot be correct (French papers do lie so that I am afraid to take their word for any unauthenticated information), the piece will hardly be found suitable for the English or the American stage, owing to the inherent impropriety of its main idea.

"L'Etrangère," by Alexandre Dumas, has been received, read, and cast at the Comédie Française. Croizette is to play the leading character, which is that of a certain duchess and not that of l'Etrangère, who is quite a secondary personage. As the rehearsals are to commence immediately, it is probable that the piece will be produced some time next | spring. M. Perrin is also about to revive "Lady Tartuffe," the brilliant comedy of the late Madame de Girardin, with Croizette as Lady Tartuffe (originally played by Rachel); Mademoiselle Reichemberg as Jeanne; and Got in Regnier's part of Hector de Tourbi res. M. Regnier, who, ever since he quitted the stage, has filled the post of stage-manager at the Comédie Française, resigned his functions, and retired definitely into private life the other day. A grand banquet was given to him on the occasion at the Café Brebant by

BIRDS WITH TEETH.

HE student of natural history who, at

THE R

the present day, covets the name and fame of "discoverer," need but direct his energies toward the unearthing of some one of the numberless "missing links" to find his wish granted and his fame assured. What a new asteroid is to the astronomer, a "missing link" is to the natural historian or philosopher. As we all know, the chain for which these lost links are wanted is that which is to connect the whole line of created organism, vegetable and animal, and estab lish beyond a peradventure the theory of progressive development. As it does not fall within the scope of this article to discuss at length the nature and merits of this so-called Darwinian theory, we will be content to direct attention to but one of the many discov eries made which are claimed to support it. The line of supposed advance or progression leads from reptiles to birds, and thence to the mammalia, or "animals proper, on to man, the last and most perfect work. Reptiles, as is proved, have teeth, which indicate a certain order of physical or rather physiological structure, and which fact places them, when taken with other distinctive features, above the mollusks and other lower forms of created organisms. It hence appears that, if we would establish that intimate connection between reptiles and birds which the claims of the theory would suggest, we must, or should, discover some evidences in the earlier forms of the latter of these dental organs.

In the Popular Science Review for October, 1875, Henry Woodward, F. R. S., F. G. S., etc., in a paper on this subject, presents a brief record of the advance which has been made along this line of research. Though the communication to which we refer is from its very nature purely technical in character, we yet trust, by the aid of the accompanying illustrations, to convey to the unprofessional reader a general idea of the subject, which, though not strictly popular when considered in detail, has yet an important bearing upon questions of universal interest.

"One of the greatest difficulties," says

the writer," which the systematic naturalist meets with in the examination of the fauna of a new country, is that his old ideas of classification are perpetually shaken by contact

with new and strange life-forms, whose places are the more hard to fix in proportion to the procrustean character of the system into which he strives to fit them," but these difficulties are regarded as "light compared with those which the paleontologist encounters as he exhumes the fragmentary relics of bygone faunas, and strives, by the aid of existing organisms, to rehabilitate the crumbling remains of the former world. For he knows that the vast assemblage of living forms which he sees around him to-day have sprung, by descent, from the earlier life of the past." The italics are our own, and serve to indicate that the conviction of the writer is in favor of the theory which these facts are adduced to support. Leaving it for the opponents of these views to discuss them with the author, we will pass directly to a brief and necessarily cursory description of the illustrations.

In Figs. 1 and 2 we have the head and skull respectively of the Merganser serrator, a bird whose beak is fringed with tooth-like serrations, which closely approach in character to real teeth, though connected only with the horny covering, and not with the bones of the mandible, and yet which would seem to indicate that the presence of feath

ers does not of necessity imply that the beak should be smooth or toothless. Professor Owen has discovered in the London clay of the isle of Sheppey a kindred form, to which

the name Odontopteryx toliopicus is given; | sisted by this pterosauroid armature of its and in Fig. 3 we have a reproduction on a jaws." reduced scale of the skull. This is described as having bony denticles, inclined at a con

| siderable angle, their points being directed toward the extremity of the beak, in both the upper and lower jaws. In the case of the Merganser it will be observed that this incli

nation is backward, or toward the points of articulation.

From a study of this fossil Professor Owen concludes that the creature to which

the skull belonged was "a warm-blooded, feathered biped, with wings; that it was web-footed, and a fish-eater; and that, in the catching of its slippery prey, it was as

Having thus, as the writer believes, disposed of the difficulty arising from the law of correlation, which requires that a beak and feathers should be associated together, he next considers the inquiry whether the assumed possession of teeth coated with enamel and implanted in sockets is irreconcilable with the undoubted fact that the subject was an animal coated with feathers. Into this field of inquiry we will not follow him, since it would extend the subject beyond our chosen limit. In Fig. 4 is presented a view of the head of a gosling before hatching, which will at once attract attention from its resemblance to that of a more familiar

creature. The heavy knob at the end of the beak is that with which it breaks the shell. This illustration is here introduced, as is stated, since it is "suggestive, possibly, of further persistent embryonal characters." In Fig. 5 we have a copy of Professor Owen's Archeopteryx macrura, which is made the subject of extended comment, and which, from its relatively complete form, as here restored, furnishes the writer material for enforcing his views.

It is with pleasure that we find the writer ready to recognize the eminent services rendered by Professor Marsh, of Yale College,

whom he regards as "a veritable crusader in paleontology," adding the hope "that he will, for the sake of science, attempt less hazardous enterprises among the restless Indians of Kansas, and be satisfied to work out and publish the splendid mass of material which he has already accumulated, and for which English paleontologists are craving." Favoring, as will the American reader, the course suggested by Mr. Woodward, we yet venture to remind him that the service to science is not the only one rendered by this energetic worker; and that, if the services of Professor Marsh in that direction have won the favor of English savants, his efforts in behalf of the Indians have been such as to assure his welcome and guarantee his personal safety while among them.

In response to our recent request for information concerning the sudden whitening of the human hair, we have received the follow

ing communication from Oliver R. Willis, A. M., Ph. D., Principal of the Alexander Institute, White Plains, New York. While a guest at the house of a gentleman, whose name is given, the writer was struck with the remarkable whiteness of his hair; and, in response to an inquiry regarding it, received the following reply: "It changed in a few hours, under the following circumstances: I had a son large enough to go from my dwelling to my store alone. One afternoon he left the store to come home about an hour before I came to tea. When I reached home, my wife met me and said the boy had been found on the top of a heap of sand, with his face down, quite dead. I came into this room, where the child had been brought, and sat down in a sort of stupor produced by the shock, and remained here all night. When I came in my hair was black, in the morning it was white as it now is." At the time when this was narrated, the speaker was a young man, and he is still living; and our correspondent states that both he and his neighbors can testify to the truth of this account. The gentleman was a resident of the village of Whitehall, New York. Our readers will recall the previous statement that a commission from the French Academy, having undertaken an extended inquiry regarding the sudden whitening of the human hair, reached the conclusion that during the last two hundred years there could be found no authenticated record of such a change. The instance above given has certainly much to warrant its acceptance as true, though, while in no manner questioning the sincerity of our correspondent, we should yet be pleased to have his statement verified by that of others, since the multiplication of witnesses can but add strength to any testimony, while the citation of other cases will add still further to the weight of testimony already given.

Les Mondes describes a simple and yet effective device by which sea-water may be changed into fresh. This is, in fact, a condenser of peculiar pattern, and which depends on the sun for heat to cause the desired evaporation and the coolness of the atmosphere for subsequent condensation. As described, this device consists of a shallow box, 4, which is watertight, and into which the salt-water is poured to the proportionate depth indicated; B is a glass plate, which, while acting as a cover, inclines also toward the tin trough C; one end

of this trough projects beyond the side of the box, and beneath it is placed a receiving-tub, D. When this box containing the salt-water is exposed to the sun's rays, an evaporaton of the water takes place. This moisture, on rising, encounters the lower slanting surface of the glass cover, upon which it is condensed, and flows slowly down into the trough C, and along this into D. It is stated that, with a glass three feet two inches square, two gallons of hot water may be obtained a day, the amount being regulated, however, by the heat of the sun.

WE recently directed attention to the fact that in a Western mine in which the timbers

had been consumed by fire, and the shaft choked up in consequence, the walls and timbers were found to be red-hot after the lapse of months. A fact kindred to this, and bearing on the same subject, is given to the public through a recent letter from S. A. Sague to the American Manufacturer. Referring to the time during which fire may be retained in a blast furnace, after it has been "banked up," the writer cites the case of the Emma Furnace of the Union Iron-Works Company, Cleveland, Ohio. This furnace, we learn, was banked, or damped down, December 4, 1874. The iron having been run out, the furnace was filled with Connellsvile coke. Great care was exercised in stopping up all cracks or openings into which air might gain admission, and every precaution was taken that the fire might remain until advisable to resume operations. It was not expected at the time that the period of idleness would exceed three months at farthest. Owing to depression in business, this period was extended, however, and the furnace allowed to stand idle until July 9, 1875, that is, for two hundred and seventeen days. During this entire time not a thing was done, or a pound of fuel added. When the furnace was opened on the date given, two-thirds of the coke was in a live condition, and there was plenty of fuel to commence work. For the benefit of any furnace-men among our readers we give the following description of the Emma Furnace: It is sixty-five feet high, sixteen feet bosh, and eight feet across at tuyeres. Immediately before it was banked it was making from forty-eight to fifty gross tons daily, and that is the present daily product. In view of this remarkable metallurgical triumph the writer joins with James Paton, the general superintendent, and Mr. Elias Metzler, the furnice-man, in asking whether this record has ever been equaled or excelled, and we willingly extend the inquiry to our readers, since the subject is one of great metallurgical and pecuniary significance.

Two of the arctic expeditions, whose departure was announced in these columns, have returned from their brief visit to the polar seas. Captain Young, of the Pandora, after securing the latest dispatches from the Alert and Discovery, concluded to return to England for the winter, and his vessel is now safe at anchor in an English harbor. The second expedition is that which was dispatched from Sweden, and which is announced as having arrived at Hammerfest on September 26th. Though the absence was not long-continued, yet the results obtained were valuable, they having brought back a rich naturalists' collec

tion and important hy drographic reports. The mouth of the Jenisei River was reached on the 15th of August, and from that point Professors Nordenskjöld, Sundstroem, and Stuxberg, took leave of the expedition, in order to return to Sweden by the way of Siberia.

Ir is claimed for the French Institute that it is the only scientific body in that country which takes no holiday, even for any religious or national festivity. Since the date of its foundation but once has its regular weekly meeting been interrupted. This was during the reign of the Commune, whose members, having erected a barricade across the avenues leading to the Institute, forbade admission to M. Elie de Beaumont, the perpetual secretary.

PROFESSOR HARTE, of Cornell University, in his capacity as Director of the Geological Survey of Brazil, has left Rio Janeiro with his assistants, and begun his work of exploration and survey. He is to leave the coast at Pernambuco, and thus enters upon a service that will command his attention for several years.

As the incidental result of an attempt to determine the length of time which must elapse between the ingestion of a dose of alcohol and its disappearance from the brain, Rajewsky discovered that the brain and other viscera either normally contain alcohol, or else this substance is generated from them in the course of distillation in closed vessels.

Miscellanea.

give here the second part of the "Chapter of Wedding-Anecdotes," the first portion of which appeared recently:

A clergyman on one occasion waited for a couple in his parlor one evening, and, as they did not keep their engagement, he went to bed. Just about half-past eleven o'clock the door-bell rang violently. He put a cap and a wrapper on, and, in a state of general undress, opened the second-story window and looked out. There stood the tardy candidates for matrimony.

66

Well, it's too late now," said the clergyman, "and it's too cold."

"Yes," called up the man, "but we missed the train, and I sail to-morrow."

"Well, then, go to some other minister," answered the irate parson.

"We can't now," both shouted up from the garden-walk, "it's too late."

"Well, I cannot marry you now," he said; "the servant has taken the front-door key and has gone to sleep."

"Well, then, marry us out of the window," came up from below.

And so the minister took the book in hand and called out the directions from the secondstory casement, and the parties complied with the several orders, and finally left the fee in an envelope under the front-door, and went out of the garden-gate man and wife.

The levity with which some persons enter upon the solemn service of matrimony is very strange.

Persons often act as friends and witnesses, as parents and relatives, who only do it as they would act their parts in a farce or a charade. Actors and actresses have been known to be married just in the same way in which they would perform a certain role upon the stage, with that cynical air which a life of sim

ulation so often involves on the part of those who realize that

"All the world's a stage."

One Saturday evening an Irish man and woman came to a certain minister's house to be married, but, finding him at a service, went over to his church and waited his pleasure. They wanted to be married at once, but they had no friends or witnesses with them. The minister demurred for some time, but the woman was too much for him, and at last he was blarneyed" into compliance. When it came to the woman's turn to respond, she broke out laughing, and could not go on. "That will do," said the minister. "I am sure now there is something wrong; I can proceed no further."

"Oh, now, your riverince !" said the woman; "go on like a man; get that there ring on my finger once, and then I'm as good as the next one."

But still the minister refused. "Shure," said the woman, you wouldn't stop half-way when it's only a few words more will do the job intirely?"

But there was no more "go" to that alarmed clergyman, who was only too much relieved to stand clear with his conscience, and, like Paul amid the wreck at Melita, to throw off the villainous beast in the fire, and, like him, to feel no harm!

On one occasion a clergyman, after pronouncing the benediction upon the kneeling couple before him, put forth his hand to congratulate the young husband, when he, with an indignant, injured air, waved his hand away, saying, at the same time, "It is all right, sir; the first-groomsman will attend to that." The same minister has another story of an old uncle, who brought his niece to the rectory on a cold, rainy day, to be married, and who, after the ceremony was over, fumbled about for a two-dollar bill, and, not being able to find it, said, as he handed the parson a five-dollar "Take the change out of that for a twonote, dollar job; it's kind o' wet-and-cold-like today, and I guess two dollars will be about the thing."

The following story is unique in itself, and, though slightly bordering on the sacrilegious, is strictly true: A hospitable city rector, in the city of centennial glory, had a Western German missionary staying with him during some convention or clerical gathering. One night he went some distance to marry a couple at the bride's father's house, and, for company's sake, the Western brother went with him. Suddenly the rector exclaimed:

"There! I have forgotten my prayerbook, and these people are Presbyterians! What shall I do?"

"Go on

"Vy, zurely you knows de zervize by dis dime," said the German brother. mitout any book!"

"Well, let us see," said the clergyman, "how does it begin? We will walk on; I will repeat it, and you correct me if I get it wrong."

"Yah vhole!" answered the German. "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the sight of God and in the face of this company That is right?" said the minister.

"Yaas," said the German.

"to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony,' which-whichwhat comes next?" inquired the perplexed

rector.

"Vich? Let me see," replied the German missionary, "how does it go? Oh, yaas!'Vich, being so divine and comfortable a thing to those who receive it worthily, and so dan

gerous to them who presume to receive it unworthily-"

"Hold on, man!" said the astonished minister, "you have gone into the communionservice; I can never get straight now."

Another mistake like this happened to a very absent-minded clergyman, who stood up before a bright roomful of joyous people, and began the wedding-service as follows:

"Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery-''

"Stop, stop!" cried out the astonished groom, "we came here to be married, not buried."

All the Year Round gives some amusing instances of what it calls "Notifications Extraordinary: "

In the time of Napoleon III., a notice was placed at the entrance to the Pavilion Henri Quatre, at St.-Germain, setting forth-" The persons hereunder mentioned are not allowed to enter: 1. Men in working-clothes; 2. Women without bonnets; 3. Servants without their masters or mistresses; 4. Children without their parents; 5. Wives without their husbands; 6. Dogs without their muzzles." Somebody blundered, but that somebody has the consolation of knowing officials of the new régime are just as fallible. When the Prefect of Lyons decreed that cafés and wine-shops must close their doors at half-past eleven, he thought it necessary to warn all persons chancing to be in such places at that time of night that they must leave without being compelled to do His brother of Grenoble capped this by announcing-No burial without religious rites would be permitted except with the expressed wish of the deceased-displaying as much consideration for the defunct as the officials of the War Department did in ordering that, "whenever a soldier on half-pay shall die, or whenever a soldier shall be placed upon halfpay, he shall be informed of it by the War Minister." Impracticable rules are easily made; it is not so easy to make a regulation defying evasion, a feat accomplished by the authorities of Denver when they notified all travelers over the town-bridge that "no vehicle, drawn by more than one animal, is allowed to cross this bridge in opposite directions at the same time."

So.

A clerical land-owner, finding his warrens were poached while he preached, sought to insure his game a quiet Sunday by warning offenders in this wise: "Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy. Beware, my friends; your names are all known. If you trespass on these fields, or touch my rabbits, you will be prosecuted according to the law." The reverend rabbit-preserver was not inclined to make nice distinctions like the turnip-grower, who politely intimated: "Ladies and gentlemen are requested not to steal the turnips; other persons, if detected, will be prosecuted." And he might have taken a lesson in liberality from a gentleman who put up a board inscribed, "Ten shillings reward! Any person found trespassing on these lands or damaging these fences, on conviction, will receive the above reward." It may be questioned if he would have been as true to his word as the Aberdeen factor who was wont to jog the memory of a laggard tenant with

"To avoid all proceedings unpleasant,
I beg you will pay what is due;

If you do, you'll oblige me at present;
If
you don't, why, I'll oblige you."

No writer of stories with a purpose ever succeeded so thoroughly as Foote, when he

invented his tale of the Grand Panjandrum for Macklin's discomfiture, which remains unsurpassed as a piece of pure nonsense; but a Lahore hotel-keeper's notice to his customers would serve equally well as a mnemonic test, for we might safely "bet our pile" against any of his patrons finding a place in their memory for such a wondrous example of English composition as this: "Gentlemen who come in hotel not say any thing about their meals they will be charged for, and if they should say beforehand that they are going out to breakfast or dinner, etc., and if they say that they have not any thing to eat, they will be charged, and if not so, they will be charged, or unless they bring it to the notice of the manager of the place; and should they want to say any thing, they must order the manager for, and not any one else, and unless they not bring it to the notice of the manager, they will charge for the least things according to the hotel rate, and no fuss will be allowed afterward about it. Should any gentleman take wall-lamp or candle-light from the public rooms, they must pay for it without any dispute its charges. Monthly gentlemen will have to pay my fixed rate made with them at the time, and should they absent day in the month, they will not be allowed to deduct any thing out of it, because I take from them less rate than my usual rate of monthly charges."

Not long ago, the girls of a Maine factory, rather than submit to a reduction of wages, gave the mill-owners a month's notice, and at the same time issued a notice to the public in general, and the masculine public in particular, in these words: "We are now working out our notice: can turn our hands to most any thing; don't like to be idle, but determined not to work for nothing when folks can afford pay. Who wants help? We can make bonnets, dresses, puddings, pies; knit, roast, stew, and fry; make butter and cheese, milk cows and feed chickens, hoe corn, sweep out the kitchen, put the parlor to rights, make beds, split wood, kindle fires, wash and iron, beside being remarkably fond of babies; in fact, can do most any thing the most accomplished housewife is capable of doing, not forgetting the scoldings on Mondays or Saturdays. For specimens of our spirit we'll refer you to our overseers. Speak quick! Black eyes, fair forehead, clustering locks, beautiful as Hebe; can sing like a seraph, and smile most bewitchingly. An elderly gentleman, who wants a good house-keeper, or a nice young man in want of a wife-willing to sustain either character-in fact, we are in the market. Who bids Going, going, gone! Who's the lucky man?" If these Maine girls be ordinary samples of the American factorygirls, no wonder Sam Slick's friend put a notice over his gates at Lowell-" No cigars or Irishmen admitted within these walls," and pleaded in justification that "the one would set a flame a-going among the cottons, and the other among the gals."

Equally astonished, we dare say, was Professor Huxley at finding himself fathering upon Locke the extraordinary political doctrine that the end of government was the good of the government; but his indignation was hardly likely to be so great as that of a peaceat-any-price advocate when he discovered that a cruel Northern journalist, by merely introducing one unnecessary letter turned what was intended to be sublime into something deliciously ridiculous, and made his vigorous peroration end: "Let us, then, unanimously, earnestly, resolutely take our place in that increasing host

666 Along whose front no sabres shine,
No blood-red pennons wave,
Whose banners bear the simple line-
"Our duty is to shave!"""

In justice to the fraternity, it must be conceded that reporters are often saddled with other folk's sins. It must have been the compositor's fault that the preacher's "Men should work and play too" was changed into "Men should work and play Loo," and that the death of the subject of a coroner's inquest was attributed to "serious apoplexy."

But for the worthy compositor's ingenious misreading of his copy, the public would never have known that "a number of small sextons" had been sent out with the Ashantee Expedition; that the Pittsburg (sic!) Legislature had "pasted" a certain bill over the governor's head; that a gentleman connected with the Brighton Aquarium had undertaken the a marine and fresh-tater aquarium charge of " in New York;" and that one evening the House of Commons ordered the chairman "to repeat prayers," instead of reporting progress. Nor was it anybody else's fault that our greatgrandfathers were scandalized at learning that at the Old Bailey Sessions in 1799 "the grandjury, after a suitable exhortation from Lord Kenyon, were ordered to be privately whipped and discharged." We have read, however, of more impossible things coming to pass than the whipping of grand-jurors. Not long ago, a tailor stood in the dock for misappropriating his employer's property, and the latter, we were told, deposed that "the materials were to be returned made up on a Thursday, and on the Sunday following, he discovered that the deceased had left his home, and he did not see him again until he was in custody." The "deceased" was sentenced to a month's hard labor.

Some of the industrious gentlemen whose avocation it is to hunt up news for provincial journals, have a very odd way of putting things. Under the heading, "Death from Drowning," we read: "On Saturday, Mr. J. C. Jarrold, deputy-coroner, held an inquest at the Hazard Arms, Mill Lane, concerning the death of Thomas Shipp, who was drowned on the following night." Chronicling the coming to grief of a young trapeze-performer, the reporter says: "It was afterward discovered that the boy's collar-bone was broken, but, unfortunately, his injuries are not of a dangerous description." Another announces, without a word of protest against the vivisectionists, that "A British Workman is about to be opened at Morpeth." A third tells us "A pony-carriage was passing along New Bond Street, Bath, when, in turning into Northgate Street, it fell down and broke both of its legs.' Recording some steeple-chase doings at Monaghan, the Irish Times said: "A very nice day's sport was carried on over an excellent course, all grass, over the lands of Mr. Henderson, whose hospitality was unbounded. It consisted of two walls, two bank-drops, a

water-cut, and two hurdles." Telling of a man who lost his life in a riot, a Belfast paper ended the story with: "They fired two shots at him, the first shot killed him, but the second was not fatal." He was not blessed with a couple of lives, like the deaf man named Taff, who was run down by a passenger-train and killed; he was injured in a similar way a year ago." The Irish journalists, however, cannot be accused of monopolizing the manufacture of bulls; their English brethren are equally clever that way; as they proved by sending the Princess Louise to Wimbledon "to witness the shooting of her husband;" describing the Prince of Wales's second son as "an amiable boy like his mother;" and announcing that the Duke of Hamilton would shortly take to wife "the late Lady Mary Louisa Elizabeth Montague."

THE "Table-Talker" in the Gentleman's Magazine has the following:

I have just turned over a note made many years ago on reading a passage in one of the late Dean Alford's essays on "The Queen's English." It is one of the most curious of the dean's blunders, and was overlooked by Mr. Washington Moon in his grammatical criticisms upon those essays. These are the dean's words, with the dean's own punctuation:

"I have some satisfaction in reflecting, that, in the course of editing the Greek text, I believe I have destroyed more than a thousand commas, which prevented the text being properly understood."

The amusing point is that, in a passage in which the writer was denouncing the redundant use of commas, at the very word commas he inserted a redundant comma which, to quote the phrase immediately following it, prevented the text from being understood. His meaning, of course, was that in the Greek text in question there were more than a thousand commas which prevented the text from being understood, and he had destroyed them; but his own redundant point after the word commas plainly implies that he prevented the text from being understood by destroying more than a thousand commas. There is, I need hardly say, another redundant comma in the passage, after the word reflecting; which is, however, only worthy of note as occurring in a lecture addressed to careless people against the too frequent use of commas.

A SOCIETY (says a London contemporary) has been formed in France, under high auspices, for abolishing the English custom lately adopted very generally by our neighbors of shaking hands. "Le shake hands," as the act in question is pleasantly called, had become quite a familiar gesture among the French, especially those of the upper and mid

dle classes; and it has now been discovered that this mode of salutation is not only famil iar, but essentially vulgar. We even find it stated by a writer, who has made this subject one of his special studies, that it is "destruetive of all honorable and profitable association between men." Still less is this "offensive manual act" to be thought of between men and women, but it is, above all, between parents and children that the practice of shaking hands, or, as the members of the new society put it, "shaking the body by the arm"-as though the arm were a sort of handle to the body-is thought reprehensible. This odious custom, against which the authority of the Church has at last been invoked, is said by the authors of this movement to have been originally invented by the Freemasons, and to have been generally introduced in England as a cheap and convenient means of currying favor at elections. In the words of one of the chief promoters of the new social, or, as some think, anti-social movement, it was "generally an insincerity, always a familiarity." Moreover, familiarity led to a sense of equality, and equality to communism and revolution. A

return to the ancient custom of saluting by an inclination of the head will, we are assured, lift those who pledge themselves to it into association with the good and great of former times. It will, moreover, separate a man from the vulgar and the base, and will be evidence that he has put away "insolence as regards his superiors, familiarity as regards his equals, and servility as regards his inferiors." The chief ostensible promoter of the movement now being carried on in France against the pernicious custom of "shaking the body by the arm" is the Abbé Defourny, of Beaumont. The association, of which the abbé is the head, proposes, according to an Italian journal, which described not long ago the reception of the Curé of Beaumont by the pope, to "reëstablish respect in families and to inspire Christians with a horror for sedition and war." It further appears from a French journal, published at Lyons, that the Abbé Defourny "calls for the reprobation by ecclesiastical authority of a most disrespectful usage which comes to us from the Freemasons, and which consists in shaking by the poignée de main à l'Anglaise the body of the person whom it is intended to salute;" and that he "asks for the approbation of the Christian salutation, which consists of

kissing the hands of parents and superiors, or of inclining one's self respectfully before them and saying, Let Jesus Christ be praised,' Laudetur Jesus Christus." The Holy Father has given but a guarded reply to the Abbé Defourny's petition, contenting himself with observing, through the proper authority, that "there is no reason why it should not be deeply desired," or, more literally, that "nothing stands in the way of its being deeply desired," that the new formula for wishing "Good-morning" should be generally adopted.