case was different.  The hen had become a trespasser.  She had no business with kittens.  There was no hypothesis by which she could claim them as her own.  Kittens are not hereditary in the family of fowls, and she knew it.  It was an usurpation without any pretext of justification.  What would become of us if such a precedent could be extended to the genus Mammalia? Hundreds of rapacious old maids would be seizing all sorts and all sizes of babies from agonized mothers, and asserting for themselves the hallowed duties of maternity.  Our infant days would have been days of ceaseless motion.  We should have been shuttle-cocked from maiden to mother and from mother to maiden after a fashion calculated to defeat the wise purposes of ipecac and paregoric, and to frighten our natural curls into a state of painful perpendicularity.  The mere presentment of such a possibility, carries its refutation, and puts the aggressions of this Sacramento hen in the category of outrages which all society is banded to suppress.  If you must laugh, O generation of scoffers, make your jokes and gibes the instrument of protecting the altars of all such feline households as may be thus assailed.

* * * * *

Flag and Rag.

What is the difference between a railroad danger signal and a lost pocket-handkerchief?

The one is a red flag, the other is a fled rag.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  SOCIAL SCIENCE.

Lecturer. “THERE IS A CUMULATIVE APPROXIMATIVENESS, SO TO SPEAK, A
PERIOD WHEN THE RECALCITRANT CORPUSCLES BEGIN TO “-------

Stenographer. “CON-FOUND THE FELLOW!  I KNEW HE’D BREAK MY PENCIL WITH HIS INFERNAL JAW-SMASHERS!”]

* * * * *

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE.

[BY ATLANTIC CABLE.]

ROME.

Being uneasy about our agent’s course at the Vatican, I have come over to Rome to see about it.  He is an Irishman, with a little of Father TOM in him, and has got into a “controversy” with his Holiness about infallibility.  Our African bishop (otherwise PHELIM BURKE) insists that PUNCHINELLO is infallible!  The Pope says this is ridiculous!  Father PHELIM replies that “there are two that can play that same game.”  I found them in the midst of this when ANTONELLI ushered me into the Papal presence.  PIUS was up on his feet, talking Latin like a crack student of the Propaganda.  PHELIM had his sleeves rolled up.  ANTONELLI, with a “Pax vobiscum” got the two contending powers quieted down; and, after a proper salutation from me, we began our talk.  His Holiness is not much on English.  Says he, “I speak vat-I-can English.”  Had he said non possumus to it, it would have been better.  However, PHELIM translated him; so we got on.

“Your Holiness enjoys, I hope, a good constitution?”

“The constitutio de fide is, indeed, very good.  Catholics must every where subscribe to it.”