364 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
PHILOSOPHY AND CHILDREN’S DRESSES. 
In the different squares of our city, it is 
really distressing sometimes of an afternoon 
to witness the effect produced by nurses 
vieing with each other in decorating their 
poor little infant charges so as to make them 
look genteel. Go to a fashionable watering 
place, and the case is worse ; parents and 
sisters also feel their credit at stake, in pro¬ 
ducing the best-dressedlittle responsibilities. 
In the country, properly so called, how dif¬ 
ferent. The children are allowed to kick off 
shoes and stockings if they please in hot 
weather, and to run about as and where they 
choose. The effect is that they grow up 
robust and strong, with healthy minds in 
healthy bodies. 
The effect of these city fashions, pushed 
to the extreme they are, upon health, is not 
easily to be estimated. A child, dressed up 
in fine clothes, cannot take proper hearty ex¬ 
ercise. Its movements are all watched and 
constrained by the nurses. It never stirs 
without the fear of being scolded by some 
one for disarranging its curls or soiling its 
clean dress. How miserable all this con¬ 
straint upon its freedom. Those ringlets so 
carefully arranged, what a source of misery 
and often sickness. Long hair will absorb as 
much of a child’s strength in a season as would 
give it an inch of growth. Now it tickles 
the neck, now it increases the warmth, and 
now it is wet and gives the child a perpetu¬ 
al cold and sore throat. This fine dressing 
must be a source of countless irritations. 
The nurse acquires the habit of perpetually 
snapping, interfering, watching and check¬ 
ing all the free notions of childhood, and the 
little one learns to believe that to sit still, 
and take these lectures meekly is the very 
essence of being a good child. Its spirit is 
broken in, and it becomes a docile suppliant, 
instead of a free, bold, and vigorous child. 
No wonder its cheek is pale, and the doctor 
is constantly needed, or that it grows up 
nervous, irritable and peevish. 
The direct cost of all this is no trifle. It 
may gratify a parent’s taste for the moment, 
gratify that kind of affection which loves to 
bestow costly tokens of regard, however 
useless or injurious, but where is the prudent 
mother that would not better show her kind¬ 
ness by creating a little fund, and saving all 
these superfluous expenses for its use at a 
future day ? The extra cost of this curling, 
making and washing fine dresses of two such 
little ones, is not less than equal to the time 
of a maid servant, or $250 beyond what is 
requisite in attention for their best health 
and greatest comfort. There are telegraph 
stocks in the city where every $250 thus 
saved would increase in eight years to $625. 
The habits of infancy form the taste of youth, 
and the passion for finery is easily cherished. 
But what man of moderate means can 
afford to marry one of these young lilies of 
the valley, who toil not, neither do they spin, 
while arrayed more gorgeously than Solomon 
in all his glory 1 
Life itself is often put in jeopardy by all 
this. A thin, fine dress has given many a child 
the croup ; a low bare neck has enlarged 
the tonsils, and contracted the chest of 
many a pretty little one. We ourselves have 
very lively recollections of chilled and ach¬ 
ing feet, chilblains and innumerable other 
evils, through the thin, pretty, buttight shoes 
into which the feet of our childhood were 
crammed even in winter on a Sunday, that 
we might appear respectable at church. 
A little child just beginning to walk climbs 
up to the top of a pair of stairs, step by step 
alone. Its feet get entangled in its dress, it 
pitches head long down to the bottom, and its 
brain is injured for life; or it dies, and the 
father finds the hopes and toils of a life frus¬ 
trated. What has caused it ? Some feeble 
lace inserting at the bottom of its dress, 
through which its little foot has naturally 
caught, torn the lace and tripped it up. 
Would that father but take a penknife and 
cutaway the whole of such dangerous finery, 
it would be no small kindness to the child, 
nurses to the contrary notwithstanding. 
“A little humor now and then, 
Is relished by the best of men.” 
THE LITTLE FROCK AND SHOES. 
BY BENJ. R. M1TCHEL. 
A little frock but slightly worn, 
Of blue and white de laine, 
With edging round the neck and sleeves, 
Lay folded neat and plain; 
Beside a little pair of shoes, 
With here and there a flaw, 
Lay half concealed among the things 
In mother’s bureau draw. 
Summer had passed away from earth 
With all her sweetest ties. 
The birds had left their Summer haunts 
For more congenial skies; 
The twilight breezes sweetly played 
Among the dews of even— 
An angel left his home on high, 
To gather flowers for heaven! 
The angel near and nearer came, 
Where sister sick did lie ; 
Then gently fann'd her faded cheek, 
And pointed to the sky ! 
The morning shone upon the bed, 
The Autumn wind blew free, 
The angel moved its silvery wings 
And whisper’d, “ come with me.” 
We gather’d round her dying bed, 
With hearts to weep and pray, 
And many were the tears we shed, 
When sister went away ! 
“ No bitter tears had she to weep,” 
No sin to be forgiven, 
But closed her little eyes in sleep, 
To open them in heaven ! 
We laid her in the ear th’s green breast, 
Down by the village green 
Where gently weeps the dewy grass, 
And Summer flowers are seen 
And often, when dear mother goes 
To get her things to use, 
1 see her drop a silent tear 
On sisters frock and shoes. 
ANECDOTE OF HOGARTH- 
A few months before this ingenious artist 
was seized witli the malady which deprived 
society of one of the most distinguished or¬ 
naments, he proposed to his matchless pen¬ 
cil the work he has entitled a “Tail Piece” 
—the first ideafof which is said to have been 
started in company, while the convivial glass 
was circulating round his own table. 
“ My next undertaking,” said Hogarth, 
“shall be the End of all Things.” 
“ If that is the case,” replied one of his 
friends, “your business will be finished, for 
there will be an end of the painter.” 
“That will be so, answered Hogarth, sigh¬ 
ing heavily, “and therefore the sooner my 
work is done the better.” 
Accordingly, he began the next day, and 
continued his design with a diligence that 
seemed to indicate an apprehension (as the 
report goes) he should not live until he com¬ 
pleted it. This, however, as he did in the 
most ingenous manner, by grouping every¬ 
thing which could denote the end of all 
things—a broken bottle—an old broom worn 
to the stump—the butt end of an old firelock 
—a cracked bell—a bow unstrung—a crown 
tumbled in pieces—tower in ruins—the sign¬ 
post of a tavern, called the World’s End, 
tumbling—the moon in her wane—the map 
of the globe burning—a gibbet falling, the 
body gone, and the chains which held it 
dropping down-Phcebus and his horses being 
dead in the clouds—a vessel wrecked—Time 
with his hour glass and scythe broken, a 
tobacco pipe in his mouth, the last whiff of 
smoke going out—a playbook open, with 
“exunt omnes” stamped in the corner—an 
empty purse—and a statue of bankruptcy 
taken out against Nature. 
“ So far so good,” cried Hogarth, “noth¬ 
ing remains but this”—taking his pencil in 
a sort of prophetic fury, and dashing off the 
similitude of a painter’s pallet broken—“Fin¬ 
is !” exclaimed Hogarth, “ the deed is done 
—all is over.” 
It is a very remarkable and well known 
fact,-that he never again took the pallet in 
his hand. It is a circumstance less known 
perhaps, that he died in about a year after 
he had finished this extraordinary tail-piece 
“ You Forgot Me.” —A good joke is told 
at the expense of one of our church-going 
citizens, who is the father of an interesting 
family of children, and among them a bright¬ 
eyed boy numbering four or five summers, 
the pet of the family, and unanimously voted 
the drollest little mischief alive. On Satur¬ 
day night he had been bribed to keep peace 
and retire to bed an hour earlier than usual, 
with the promise that on the morrow he 
might go with the family to church. On 
Sunday morning it was found inconvenient 
to put the youngster through the regular 
course of washing and dressing necessary 
for his proper appearance at the sanctuary, 
and the family slipped off without him. 
They had not, however, more than got com¬ 
fortably seated in their pew, when in walked 
the youngster with nothing on but a night- 
wrapper and a cloth cap. “ You forgot me,” 
said he in a tone lound enough to be beared 
all over the church. The “ feelings ” of the 
parents can be more easily imagined than 
described .—Layfayette Journal. 
The Plymouth Rock announces a great 
medical discovery, entitled “ Syrup of Bat’s 
Wing and Quintessence of Wharf Rat.” Its 
effect on the system is thus described : “ The 
‘ Bat’s Wing’ flies into the brain, kicks up a 
row with the ill of the head, driving them out 
at the ears, while the ‘ Wharf Rat’ dives into 
the stomach, and from thence makes dili¬ 
gent inquiry into disease through the whole 
thirty feet of hose pipe which is coiled up in 
the human system.” The discoverer mod¬ 
estly alludes to his philanthropy in the 
following strain : “ In bringing out these 
medicines, 1 do it solely and entirely for the 
benefit of diseased humanity and' sympathy 
for a sick universe ; and I utterly detest 
money or reward of any kind above actual 
cost price, and as bats are not to be had in 
winter, and wharf rats only live in seaport 
places, the raw materials are scarce and 
high ; but I am nevertheless determined to 
put the articles as low as one dollar per bar¬ 
rel, which is warranted to cure a moderate 
sized disease, or you can return the empty 
cask.” 
Is Your Name Huggins'? —A little fellow 
was carrying home a coat from a tailor’s in 
Boston the other evening, when a man stop¬ 
ped him, and claimed the parcel as his. He 
attempted to take it by force, but the boy 
held on, and finally asked, “ Is your name 
Huggins?” “ Yes, that’s my name,” said 
he, “ and that’s my coat.” “ If your name 
is Huggins,” said the lad, “ the coat is not 
yours, for it belongs to Mr. Ordway.” The 
scamp immediately left him. 
Mirthfulness will save physic. 
