Maggie.—1. As silkworms’ eggs are sold in Covent Garden Market, perhaps they might buy yours, if they can be proved thoroughly healthy and strong. 2. The acidulated drops such as are almost universally sold are most injurious to the enamel of the teeth.
Cecilia.—Your lines on “Evangeline” give some promise for the future. The first sixteen lines are correct, the last sixteen are not so, neither in the number of feet nor fall of the beat, or emphasis.
May.—The fault lies with yourself if you “hold back,” and be “unable to raise yourself from sin to a certain extent,” because our Divine Lord has promised to “give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.” It most certainly is not our Father’s will that we should not “attain grace for a little while.” The evil will that keeps you back is that of your own heart and of the arch-tempter and deceiver. In reciting to uneducated people or children, select what they can comprehend, but what is good, though simple.
Miss Dayns.—Persons requiring any publication issued by the Religious Tract Society, whether a number of this paper or otherwise, should apply to the publisher (as we are always telling our correspondents), as the Editor has nothing to do with that department. He regrets that he has no knowledge of what Miss Dayns’s question was, nor in which number it may yet be answered. The number of answers inserted depends on the amount of space.
Christabel.—Ash Wednesday is the first day in Lent in the English and Roman Church. In the latter the priest makes the sign of the cross on the foreheads of the people, saying, “Remember thou art but dust and ashes, and to dust thou shalt return.” Shrove Tuesday is the day preceding Lent, when in the latter church the people go to confess and be shriven.
Una.—1. We think the process of hardening, as carried out by exposure to cold, is of questionable wisdom in most cases. 2. We have made no personal trial of the instrument you name, but heard a friend commend its utility.
Vivian Kate.—1. A young man who presumed to introduce himself to a girl could know nothing of common propriety nor of the respect due to an unprotected woman. Any knowledge of etiquette in such an individual is, of course, out of the question. In the circles of society where the rules of etiquette obtain, such impertinent intrusion on the part of a man would not be tolerated. 2. Wash the blue sateen in tepid water.
Hopefull.—The water takes up all the camphor requisite, and will last for some time in the wash. You can use it again when you make it fresh.
Dora (Aged 13) sends a poem, written when confined to the house by indisposition one Sunday, from which we can only quote one verse—
“And one, though pale, yet beautiful,