The small female glutton who steals jam in the pantry ought not to get poisoned.  She should get after a pot of warm glue, which should be made to miraculously stiffen the moment she gets it into her mouth, and have to be gouged out of her with a chisel and hammer.

Then there is the swearing party, who is struck by lightning-a very shallow and unprofitable device.  He should open his face to swear, dislocate his jaw, be unable to get closed up, and the rats should get in at night, make nests there, and breed.

There are other suggestions that might be made, but these will give a fair idea of our method, the foundation of which is the substitution of potent ridicule for the current grave but imbecile rebuke.  It may be gratifying to learn that we are embodying our views in a whole library of Sunday School literature, adapted to the meanest capacity, and therefore equally edifying to pupil, pastor, and parent.

....  A young correspondent, who has lately read a great deal in the English papers about “baby-farming,” wishes to know what that may be.  It is a new method of agriculture, in which the young of our species are used for manure.

The babies are collected each day and put into large vats containing equal parts of hydrobicarbonate of oxygenated sulphide, and oxygenated sulphide of hydrobicarbonate, where they are left to soak overnight.  In the morning they are carefully macerated in a mortar and are then poured into shallow copper pans, where they remain until all the liquid portions have been evaporated by the sun.  The residuum is then scraped out, and after the addition of a certain proportion of quicklime the whole is thrown away.  Ordinary bone dust and charcoal are then used for manure, and the baby farmers seldom fail of getting a good crop of whatever they plant, provided they stick the seeds in right end up.

It will be seen that the result depends more upon the hydrobicarbonate than upon the infants; there isn’t much virtue in babies.  But then our correspondent should remember that there is none at all in adults.

....  A young woman writes to a contemporary, desiring to learn if it is true that kissing a dead man will cure the tooth-ache.  It might; it sometimes makes a great difference whether you take your medicine hot or cold.  But we would earnestly advise her to try kissing a multitude of live men before taking so peculiar a prescription.  It is our impression that corpses are absolutely worthless for kissing purposes, and if one can find no better use for them, they might as well be handed over to the needy and deserving worm.

....  Mr. Knettle, deceased, became irritated, and fired three shots from a revolver into the head of his coy sweetheart, while she was making believe to run away from him.  It has seldom been our lot-except in the cases of a few isolated policemen-to record so perfectly satisfactory target practice.  If that man had lived he would have made his mark as well as hit it.  He died by his own hand at the beginning of a brilliant career, and although we cannot hope to emulate his shooting, we may cherish the memory of his virtues just as if we could bring down our girl every time at ten paces.