te 
342 
KIDD’S OWN JOURNAL, . 

torture larger things, and not to regard the feel- 
ings of his fellow-man. Whereas, if the child 
have instilled by its parents, feeling and consider- 
ation even for the meanest part of creation, it is 
not too much to expect that, as he grows up, he 
will be merciful and cumpassionate to his fellow. 
What sweet, what noble, what human- 
ising sentiments have we here! A moral 
lesson is presented in some half-dozen lines, 
that should occupy our whole hfe in working 
out. Is it not so? 
THE LADY’S ALMANAC FOR 1854. 
There are this year, as usual, hosts of 
competitors for public favor in the form of 
almanacs. Among them, the one before us 
is entitled to honorable mention. It is nicely 
illustrated, full of varied information, and 
has some amiable Papers descriptive of the 
Months. We subjoin a very fair specimen 
of the month of— 
J ANUARY. 
January is the year in its infancy—huddled up 
and cradled in the earth for fear of the cold—be- 
neath its coverlet of snow, like an infant, it passes 
the greater part of its life in sleep, and never 
once opens its eyes during the long dark nights 
that overshadow it. Sometimes the robin, leaving 
its footprints in the snow, will perch over the 
head of the new-born year, and with heaving red 
breast, sing to it for hours. Sometimes it may be 
seen holding a snowdrop in its little hand, which 
has been sent by some invisible messenger from 
the land of flowers, and on which, during the few 
brief intervals of sunshine, it will stare with its 
large round eyes in wonderment. The winds, 
that pipe aloud around its couch, shake the -hid- 
den buds, and they feel a stir of life beneath their 
brown sheaths, and know that the time is at 
hand when they will thrust forth their little green 
heads to look out upon the lengthening days, freed 
from their prison-house.e The golden-crested 
wren oftimes comes to peep at the young year 
while it sleeps; and the wagtail, as he marches 
round the unfrozen spring-head to see if he can 
discover an insect on the move, wonders when it 
will shake off its covering of snow and be strong 
enough to run races with the restless lambs. The 
titmouse pulls out the straw from under its head, 
as if to break its slumber. 
Though the trees are naked, the ramificatious of 
the branches are very beautiful, and no needle- 
work that ladies’ fingers ever wrought displays 
such a diversity of patterns as may be traced im the 
projecting boughs and interlacing twigs, now seen 
in Nature’s workmanship. Crochet and knitting, 
netting and embroidery, chain and loop-scroll, 
and star and diamond are, when you look up, 
seen woven upon a ground of sky, that changes 
every few minutes in a clear winter day, with the 
changing clouds. You see the great embroidery- 
frames of Nature, which m summer she sprigs 
over with leaves, and decorates with flowers ; the 
bare warp on which she works is visible, and it is 
only at this season of the year that it may be seen. 
Sometimes long flakes of frost-work hang from the 
branches like veils, and through them may be dis- 
cerned the green and crimson of the holly, looking 






like hard round compressed rosebuds preserved in 
ice. The beauty of mosses are also more dis- 
cernible now than at any other season of the year; 
and strike the eye more forcibly, through the 
absence of foliage and flowers—coming upon you 
unaware like a rustic beauty at some sudden turn- 
ing of a sweet green lane, who would scarcely 
have attracted a passing look in the streets of a 
crowded city. In the classical cup-moss we trace 
the form of vase and urn, and all those elegant 
shapes which early Grecian art has rendered so 
famous; and all the more beautiful do these fairy 
chalices look, silvered over with frost-work. 
Ladies will find many objects worthy of ad- 
miration during a walk in January ; and nothing 
can be more healthy than moderate exercise on a 
clear, bright, frosty day, in this month. It circu- 
lates the blood, and causes the roses again to 
bloom on the cheeks that have paled and faded 
through long and close confinement in warm 
rooms. Look over the same landscape, which in 
Summer was hung with leaves, diapered with 
flowers, and carpeted with green, when it is 
covered with snow—and you will scarcely know it 
again: so great a change has taken place! And 
this, perhaps, is the work of a single night. 
You arise in the morning, and look out upon a 
white world—upon a country that seems to have 
been cut out of solid marble. EHyerything has 
undergone a change; not a single thing wears 
the old familiar look to which the eye was so 
accustomed. The trees are loaded with snow, 
and the cottage roofs covered with it; and, in the 
distance, you cannot distinguish hay and corn 
stacks from the farm-houses under that vast 
mantle of monotonous white. That which was 
before the brown winding road, seems now united 
with the outspreading fields; and the hedge-rows 
which divided them look like piles of drifted snow. 
Those pleasant field-paths, along which so many 
wild flowers grew, are obliterated.; not a trace 
remains of those fanciful curvings which led you 
on from stile to stile, and the climbing of which 
caused so much laughter; for they also are half- 
buried in the snow. You look over the wild 
white landscape, and feel thankful that it is so 
silent ; that the birds, whose sweet voices enliven 
it in Spring and Summer, are far away in sunnier 
climes, instead of remaining here to perish in the 
knee-deep snow. 
On the frosted window-pane, an imaginative 
mind may trace wild landscapes—mountains above 
and vallies below, and little cottages which the 
feathered snow-flakes seem to have thatched. 
And where it melts, there seem to be black open- 
ings through solitary forests; dens where the 
wolves shelter, and coverts where the fallow-deer 
arbour, and whose antlers no pencil ever excelled, 
as they seem limned in the frost-work. Great 
feathery pines. come down, leaning every way 
from the snowy heights; while below there are 
chasms spanned by the fallen and snow-covered 
trunks of trees. 
A NARRATIVE OF PRACTICAL EXPERIMENTS 
wiTH THE “ DowsinG Forn,”’ &c. By 
F. Purppen. Hardwicke. 
No doubt most of our readers are aware 
of the great value attached by certain people 
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