Articles

A famous magician has recently been exhibiting his powers in Boston. The Sunday Record prints the conversation of one of its contributors, styled The Modern Athenian, with an old Bostonian, who resided in Calcutta many years.

Here is another story about something akin to Animal Magnetism, which is copied from a contemporary periodical: In the siege of Breda in 1625, the garrison had the scurvy. The Prince of Orange, unable to relieve the place, sent in, by a confidential messenger, a preparation to be added to a quantity of water, and given as a specific for the epidemic.

[Abstract of an extempore discourse, delivered May 22, in Chickering Hall, Boston, by Captain S.F. Linscott, of Chicago.]

From the Saturday Review are gleaned some very interesting statements on this subject, which is nearly related to Animal Magnetism. A chief employment of an Italian witch is to attacare (attack) persons.

An industrious young shoemaker fell into the habit of spending much time in a saloon. One by one his customers began to desert him.

The daily ablution of an infant is no more natural or necessary than it would be to take a fish out of water once a day, and cover it with dirt, in order to make it thrive more vigorously thereafter in its native element. Cleanliness is next to godliness; but washing should be only for the purpose of keeping the body clean, and this can be effected without scrubbing the whole surface daily.

Mrs. Mary Johnson , in Our Little Ones, tells a good story: Purr, purr, purr! Pussy sat on the kitchen window-sill, with her eyes half-shut and purred and purred.

There is much truth in the following statement, from a spicy contemporary: Doctors as a rule are fine fellows—kind, considerate, courteous, generous, charitable, influential, and deservedly so. We are all the creatures of circumstances and governed by our environments.

There would be fewer broken friendships, fewer unhappy unions and family quarrels, were it not so much the custom, among intimate friends and relations, to neglect the small courtesies of life, to show less and less mutual deference, as we grow more and more familiar. It is the foundation of misery in marriage; and many a serious and life-long estrangement has begun, not from want of affection, so much, as from lack of that delicate and instinctive appreciation of the feelings of others, which makes a person shrink from saying unpleasant things or finding fault, unless absolutely obliged, and in any case to avoid wounding the offender's sense of dignity, or stirring up within him feelings of opposition and animosity; for although many persons profess to be above taking offence at honest censure, and even seem to court criticism, yet it must be very carefully administered, not to be unpalatable.

A pleasant story is told of Rudolph, the Crownprince of Austria, who, while hunting in Bohemia, entered a grassy clearing, where an old woman was feeding her goats. He said to her: "God bless you, Mutterchen! [Little Mother] How are you today?" "Ah, how can such a handsome young man speak so friendly to an old woman! Yes, it is a hard life I live, but, God be thanked, I keep healthy.