388 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[October, 
Positives and Comparatives.— 1. Mist, mister. 2. 
Salt, psalter. 3. Sauce, saucer. 4. Doll, dollar. 5. Shoe, 
sure. 6. Mast, master. 
Send communications for the Puzzle Pox to Aunt Sue, 
Box 111, P. 0., Brooklyn , N. Y., and not to 245 Broadway. 
Aunt Sue’s Cliats. 
Bessie Bennett wants to know “ when capital p’s and 
m’s, should be used in writing ‘ mamma ’ and ‘ papa.’ ”— 
Capital letters when you use their names as proper 
nouns ;—small letters when you write them as common 
nouns. Thus : “lam going out with Father,’’ or “ I am 
going out with my father.”—She also says “ won’t you 
please explain how the Alphabetical Arithmetic puzzles 
are done?”—Won’t some of you clever arithmeticians 
tell me how to “ explain ” it to her? Bessie has a few 
words to say on the fish question too.—“Perhaps the 
reason your niece Lottie’s fish died, was because of the 
salt in the bread she gave them, for some say that salt 
kills them, (are you not thinking of birds, Bessie ?) 
We used to have an aquarium ; it was tolerably large, and 
we got some pretty small stones to cover the bottom, and 
several large ones with holes in them for a pyramid in 
the centre. The fish seemed to play ‘hide and seek’ 
among the stones. The aquarium was stocked with gold 
fish from Cincinnati, (Bessie writes from Clark Co., Ohio) 
and quite a number of common fresh water fish of differ¬ 
ent kinds from a creek. We had one fish, a pike, whose 
head looked like an alligator’s ; he ate smaller fish up, 
or at least they disappeared and we suspected him of 
eating them. We fed them with worms, macaroni, and 
occasionally little pellets of flour and water,” and here 
Bessie’s history ends. What became of the aquarium or 
of the voracious pike, she doesn’t say. I wonder if I 
couldn’t finish the story thus: “the pike died after all 
the rest of the fish disappeared; we had ceased to take J 
any interest in the aquarium; it stood around empty for 
some time, and now I believe it is in the barn somewhere, 
with one of its sides broken.” How nearly am I right, 
Bessie ? 
A. D. (Annie Dominy ?) wants to know if I ever saw 
the characteristics for a woman alphabetically arranged, 
and if I will please write then out for her. Yes, dear, 
here they are: Amiable, Benevolent, Charitable, Domes¬ 
tic, Economical, Forgiving, Generous, Honest, Industri¬ 
ous, Judicious, Kind, Loving, Modest, Neat, Orderly, 
Pleasant, Quiet., Reliable, Sincere, Tender, Useful, Vir¬ 
tuous, Wise, ’Xemplary, Yielding, Zealous. I quote 
from memory, and may not have them in the original 
form, but perhaps they are near enough for your use. 
Thanks for puzzles, letters, etc., to Alf., Robt.. W. 
Moore, Italian Boy, Capt. John W. W., and X. Answer-s 
should always accompany the puzzles sent. 
Cruelty to Animals, 
There are cases in which we must kill animals to keep 
them from hurting us, or because we need to use their 
flesh or skins. Also it is right that we deprive other 
animals of their liberty, and make them work for us. 
All these things can be done without cruelty ; if we 
must kill, it can be done quickly and without much pain, 
and if we make them work for us, we can treat them so 
kindly, that they will love us and look upon us as their 
friends. No right thinking, really good person, will ever 
needlessly pain an animal. There are many, we are 
sorry to say, who will needlessly beat, brutally kick, and 
otherwise hurt a helpless animal. Think of a man kick¬ 
ing a gentle, useful cow 1 Let us hope that such people 
are not as cruel as they seem, and that they do not know 
or think how wrong it is. Young people are sometimes 
cruel as well as old ones. We do not like to think of a 
boy or gin as cruel, and had much rather hope that in 
their desire for sport, they forget that they are giving 
pain to a poor helpless creature. What made us think 
of this was the picture given above. It is a very good 
picture so far as the art goes, but in the story it tells, it 
is a sad one. Some youngsters have been ill-treating a 
kitten ; some tin vessel was tied to the poor creature’s 
tail, and the frightened thing stoned and worried to 
death. The old lady came too late, the poor kitten is 
past saving; one guilty fellow has run away, and the 
other, all the while he is hiding a stone behind him, 
tries to make grandmother believe that it was not him¬ 
self, but that other boy. No wonder he is ashamed, and 
now that the excitement of the hunt is over, he does not 
like to own that he has had a hand in such meanness, and 
coward-lilte, wishes to put all the blame upon some one 
else. You know that cruelty is not confined to young 
persons, but there is so much of it among men, old 
enough to know better, that there are now in most cities 
and towns, societies for preventing cruelty to animals, 
and laws have been passed which make unnecessary 
cruelty punishable by fine and imprisonment. If a man 
drives a horse which is too lame to travel, or if he beats 
his horse cruelly, he can be sent to jail where he can 
think over the matter. These societies do not often 
exist in the country, but there is need of them there. 
Let us have some. Let the boys and girls in each neigh- 
■florhood, or each family, be a society to prevent cruelty to 
animals. If the other boys and girls do not agree in this, 
then be yourself a society of one. It is not the constitu¬ 
tion, the by-laws, and the officers of a society, which 
make it useful, but it is the spirit with which its mem¬ 
bers work, and if one of you youngsters—a society of 
one—by quietly taking the part of those who can not 
speak, can prevent a horse from being beaten, or a kitten 
from the fate of the unfortunate in the picture, you will 
do quite as much good in your own little circle 
as if you had all the machinery of a society to help 
you. Here is prosperity to the noble societies of one I 
