and in such a country, naturally attracted general notice, and the offender was taken into custody.  After being tried in a very summary way, his production was determined to be a libel, and the writer was condemned to eat his own words.  The singularity of such a sentence induced me to see it put into execution.  A scaffold was erected in one of the most public streets of the city; the imperial provost, the magistrates, the physicians and surgeons of the Czar attended; the book was separated from its binding, the margin cut off, and every leaf rolled up like a lottery ticket when taken out of the wheel at Guildhall.  The author was then served with them leaf by leaf by the provost, who put them into his mouth, to the no small diversion of the spectators; he was obliged to swallow this unpalatable food on pain of the knout,—­in Russia more dreadful than death.  As soon as the medical gentlemen were of opinion that he had received into his stomach as much at the time as was consistent with his safety, the transgressor was sent back to prison, and the business resumed the two following days.  After three very hearty but unpleasant meals, I am convinced by ocular proof that every leaf of the book was actually swallowed.” Lon.  Pa. Boston Palladium.

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Here is a clever mode of punishing a wife-beater without the aid of counsel:—­

    A woman in New-York, who had been beaten by her husband, finding
    him fast asleep, sewed him up in the bed-clothes, and in that
    situation thrashed him soundly.

    Salem Observer, April 24, 1827.

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Conviction of a common scold, Sept. 11, 1821; sentence not reported.

Common Scold.—­Catharine Fields was indicted and convicted for being a common scold.  The trial was excessively amusing, from the variety of testimony and the diversified manner in which this Xantippe pursued her virulent propensities.  “Ruder than March wind, she blew a hurricane;” and it was given in evidence that after having scolded the family individually, the bipeds and quadrupeds, the neighbours, hogs, poultry, and geese, she would throw the window open at night to scold the watchmen.  Her countenance was an index to her temper,—­sharp, peaked, sallow, and small eyes.  To be sentenced on Saturday week.—­Nat.  Adv.

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Women Gossips.—­Among the many ordinances promulgated at St. Helena in 1709, we find the following:—­

Whereas several idle, gossiping women make it their business to go from house [to house] about the island, inventing and spreading false and scandalous reports of the good people thereof, and thereby sow discord and debate among neighbors, and often between men and their wives, to the great grief and trouble of all good and quiet people, and to the utter extinguishing of all