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NOTES OF THE MONTH. 



A Hard Case. — An American paper has the following brief, corn- 

 plaining paragraph : — 



" One of our subscribers has stopped his paper, because we refused to 

 insert an obituary, two columns in length, of a child of his which died 

 at the age of two months. We should have had no objection to publish 

 a short obituary of the infant — but what would our other readers have 

 said to two mortal columns ?" 



It was, doubtless, a most unreasonable thing, to request the insertion 

 of so voluminous an obituary of a child, which only reached the innocent 

 age of a couple of months, and the fact of the father stopping his paper, 

 because it was refused — only ?hows what queer customers our Yankee 

 brethren of the press have to deal with. We are sorry, however, after 

 all, that our friend of the broad sheet, on the other side of the Atlantic, 

 did not, as a matter of curiosity, publish this two- column obituary; and 

 we beg to give the father of the infantile deceased due notice, should 

 this meet his eye, that the pages of The Monthly Magazine will be at 

 once thrown open to him. Let him, by all means, send the obituary 

 to us as soon as possible ; and, even supposing it should occupy half our 

 space, it shall grace the next following number of the Monthly. What 

 we are curious to know is, where, or how, this exemplary parent pos- 

 sessed himself of materials respecting this infant — out of which he could 

 spin two newspaper columns. We had thought the first two months of 

 infancy were not particularly prolific of epochs or vicissitudes, out of 

 which an obituary might be manufactured. It is pretty clear, one 

 would think, that at that tender age, babies free from the vices of after 

 life, could not have been overstocked with the positive virtues. What 

 then, in the name of wonder, could this Yankee parent have had to say 

 about his " little cherub," that would have filled two columns. It may 

 have been a " dear babe," as all babes are; and it may have been de- 

 votedly attached to " nurse" and to " pap ;" but then this is so common- 

 place an affair in the annals of babyship, that we cannot conceive on 

 what ground this affectionate father thought them worthy of particular 

 mention, in the case of his child. We wish we had not seen the above 

 paragraph : it has inspired in us a cosuming curiosity to see these two 

 columns of infantine biography. The best biography ever written of 

 any philosopher, statesman, or warrior, would not have half the same 

 charms to our minds 



The Anti-Musical Mr. Laing. — Mr. Laing, the poor man's 

 friend, of Hatton Garden office, ordered three poor " foreign fellows," 

 to be sent, tlie other day, to the House of Correction for one month. 

 And for what crime, do our readers think ? Some very serious one, no 

 tloubt ? For the crime of discoursing, the previous evenings, most sweet 

 music in the streets. We had always supposed the Hatton-Garden 

 worthy could have no relish for harmonv ; otherwise it would have 



