Gatling (our countryman, you know) has invented a Battery Gun.  They have been trying this gun over at Shoeburyness (how is that, for a name?) in England, to see whether they had not better order a few, in time for the next war.  It seems that they conducted their experiments by firing at “dummies, representing men.” (Oh, if they had only had some of our American Dummies there, who Represent Men so inadequately.) There were 136 of these simulacra, “99 of whom,” says the report “would have been killed.”  That is, if it had been possible to kill them.  In fact, they would have been killed four or five times over.  “Kilt intirely.”

We shall always feel that a great opportunity was here lost of ridding the country of certain nuisances, who, if anything at all, are worse than dummies, and deserve not four only, but four hundred balls in them, “forty-two one-hundredths of an inch in diameter,” or even larger.  There are so many, it would be useless to attempt to specify them:  and besides, everybody knows who they are.  We would begin with the Politicians, and end with the Brokers.  And then the Millennium would begin, “sure pop.”

* * * * *

TROUBLE FOR THE RISING GENERATION.

Mr. PUNCHINELLO has often thought with what melancholy feelings the naughty boys must gaze upon a fine grove of growing birches; but what pangs would a knowing child experience upon finding himself in Randolph county, Illinois, where they raise twelve bushels of castor-oil beans to the acre!  Of what depths of juvenile wretchedness and precocious misanthropy is that crop suggestive!  We see it all—­the anxious parent—­the solemn doctor—­the writhing patient—­the glass—­the spoon!  Howls like those of a battle-field, only less so, fill the air.  The wretched victim of pharmacy, conquered at last, gives one desperate gulp to save himself from strangulation, and all is over!  Ye who remember your boyhood’s home! tell us if there was any joke in all this!

* * * * *

THE GREAT MODERN O MISSION.—­The English Mission.

* * * * * [Illustration:  THE LITERARY PIRATES.

SUGGESTED BY BIARD’S PICTURE, AND SHOWING THE PIRATICAL ROVER “HARPY” SPRINGING A TRAP UPON THE GOOD SHIP “AUTHOR” IN A FAVOURABLE TRADE WIND.]

“THE HARPY.”

    With literary ventures stowed
      As full as ship can be,
    The good ship “Author” holds her way
      Over the fickle sea;
    Now sings the wind, and, all serene,
      The ripples forth and back
    Lap lightly round her gleaming sides
      And whiten on her track.

    Far westward, on the line of blue
      That meets the pearly[1] sky,
    There looms up large a stranger sail,
      A sail both broad and high;
    And as she near and nearer draws
      She hovers like a bird,
    And strains of music from her deck
      Upon the air are heard.