....  A small but devout congregation were at worship.  When it had become a free exhibition, in which any brother could enact a part, a queer-looking person got up and began a pious and learned exhortation.  He spake for some two hours, and was listened to with profound attention, his discourse punctuated with holy groans and pious amens from an edified circle of the saintly.  Tears fell as the gentle rains from heaven.  Several souls were then and there snatched as brands from the eternal burning, and started on their way to heaven rejoicing.  At the end of the second hour, and as the inspired stranger approached “eighty-seventhly,” some one became curious to know who the teacher was, when lo! it turned out that he was an escaped lunatic from the Asylum.

The curses of the elect were not loud but deep.  They fumed with exceeding wrath, and slopped over with pious indignation at the swindle put upon them.  The inspired, however, escaped, and was afterwards captured in a cornfield.

The funeral was unostentatious.

....  We hear a great deal of sentiment with regard to the last solar eclipse.  Considerable ink has been consumed in setting forth the terrible and awe-inspiring features of the scene.  As there will be no other good one this season, the following recipe for producing one artificially will be found useful:—­Suspend a grindstone from the centre of a room.  Take a cheese of nearly the same size, and after blacking one side of it, pass it slowly across the face of the grindstone and observe the effect in a mirror placed opposite, on the cheese side.  The effect will be terrific, and may be heightened by taking a rum punch just at the instant of contact.  This plan is quite superior to that of nature, for with several cheeses graduated in size, all known varieties of eclipse may be presented.  In writing up the subsequent account, a great many interesting phenomena may be introduced quite impossible to obtain either by this or any other process.

....  We have observed with considerable impatience that the authors of Sunday School books do not seem to know anything; there is no reason why these pleasant volumes should not be made as effective as they are deeply interesting.  The trouble is in the method of treating wicked children; instead of being destroyed by appalling calamities, they should simply be made painfully ridiculous.

For example, the little scoundrel who climbs up an apple-tree to plunder a bird’s-nest, ought never to fall and break his neck.  He should be permitted to garner his unholy harvest of eggs in his pocket, then lose his balance, catch the seat of his pantaloons on a knot-hole, and hang doubled up, with the smashed eggs trickling down his jacket, and getting into his hair and eyes.  Then the good little girls should be lugged in, to poke fun at him, and ask him if he likes ’em hard or soft.  This would be a most impressive warning.

The boy who neglects his prayers to go boating on a Sunday ought not to be drowned.  He should be spilled out into the soft mud along shore, and stuck fast where the Sunday School scholars could pelt him with slush, and their teacher have a fair fling at him with a dead cat.