and it is best to let "natur" caper, especially as you can't help it; and after the dust it has kicked up has cleared away, we shall see what we shall see, be it wheat or chaff. Beside, the most conservative must admit, that though Noah's Ark was excellent for the flood, the "Great Eastern" is an improvement on it; and 'tisn't pretty, so they say who oftenest practise it! to stand with the Bible in your hand in 1862, and clamor for a private latch-key to heaven.
But I have wandered from my baked beans. I want some. Some New England baked beans. Some of "mother's beans." But, alas, mother's oven is fast disappearing. Mother's oven, where the beans stayed in all night, with the brown bread. Alas! it has given way to new-fangled "ranges," which "don't know beans." Excuse the vulgarity of the expression, but in such a cause I shan't stand for trifles. If you want rose-leaf sentimental-refinement, together with creamy patriotism, you may look in the columns of the Whip-Syllabub-Family-Visitor. This is a digression.
When I started for a New England tour, it was my intention to get some of those beans; but the hotels there are getting so "genteel" with their paper-pantalettes on the roast-chicken's legs, and their paper frills on the roast-pigs'-tails, that I was convinced, that only at a genuine unsophisticated farm-house, where I could light down unannounced on Sarah-Jane—could this edible in its native and luscious beauty be found.
Next summer, if "strategy" and the rebels don't chew us up, I start on a tour for those beans; nor am I to be imposed upon by any "genteel" substitutes or abortions under that name!
A Hint to Parents.—When parents are considering the question of the hours of study for growing children in our schools, let them do it without any reference to the side question, how they can "bear those noisy children, during the subtracted hours, at home." Perhaps they can better bear this than to pay the doctor's bills. This is the way to look at it, whether it be regarded in a selfish or a humanitarian point of view.
BLACKWELL'S ISLAND.
