so help to efface the memory of the blundering
and imbecile system just come to a close. By-
and-by, let us hope there will be no need for
an old sailor to—

"Shoulder his crutch, and show how tars are
done!"

              A CHILD'S PRAYER.

     THE day is gone, the night is come,
          The night for quiet rest:
      And every little bird has flown
          Home to its downy nest.

      The robin was the last to go
          Upon the leafless bough
       He sang his evening hymn to God,
          And he is silent now.

       The bee is hushed within the hive
          Shut is the daisy's eye;
       The stars alone are peeping forth
          From out the darkened sky.

       No, not the stars alone; for God
          Has heard what I have said:
       His eye looks on His little child,
           Kneeling beside its bed.

       He kindly hears me thank him now
          For all that he has given,
        For friends, and books, and clothes, and food:
            But most of all for Heaven,

        Where I shall go when I am dead,
            If truly I do right;
       Where I shall meet all those I love,
           As Angels pure and bright.

           HOUSEHOLD CRIME.

WE have long resisted the idea of classing
arsenic among our household articles, because
its domestic use has been, till lately,
comparatively limited; but the dreadful frequency
of the cases of poisoning which have occurred
during the last twelve months, has at length
proved too strong for us to refrain from doing
so. The ease with which poison can be
procured, and the perfect facility with which
it can be administered, in small doses, so as
frequently almost to defy detection, as
displayed in recent cases of poisoning, ought
to awaken the public to a demand for the
absolute enforcement of legislative regulations
for the sale of all such drugs and deadly
ingredients.

It would appear that the crime of murder
by means of poison—and more particularly of
slow poison, or poison administered in very
small doses from time to time admits more
readily of a fiendish sophistication in the
mind of the perpetrator than any other form
by which murder is committed. No violence
is used; the destroyers can stop short of the
final dose which kills, "if they choose;" and, if
the victim dies some little time after, it is
pretended that it is a broken constitution that has
given way. If they are resolute for killing, as
they mostly are, and look the fact in the
face, still it seems by no means so regular a
murder as a blow or a stab, which leaves
marks of blood and horror; besides, poison
shields the administrator from detection. Of
the prolonged sickness and anguish of the
victims, no account is taken; the perpetrators
think only of themselves, and how the
manner of the death affects their own safety.
The great numerical preponderance of murders
by means of poison over every other means
of destruction—at least, in England—leads
one to conclusions like the above; while the
facility with which deadly drugs can be
procured, even in our smallest towns and villages,
gives an additional impulse to this form of
crime.

A thin, respectable-looking man, in
spectacles, with dark hair and whiskers, and wearing
a long brown coat, calls at a chemist's
shop in a small country town one morning,
and asks for an ounce of arsenic to kill rats.
He says his cat has just died of old age. He
receives the ounce, and departs. He has
a design to poison his wife, her mother, or
a man to whom he owes money, by small
doses from time to time; and he has now
got a stock in trade for the carrying out of
his intentions.

Sometimes the poison is purchased by a
third party, who is made to promise secrecy,
or is deceived as to the purpose to which it
is to be applied. Having obtained the poison
by these means, much caution in administering
it is not thought necessary, and the
process is not tedious. One day a young man,
known in the neighbourhood, purchased some
arsenic of a chemist at Eastwood, near
Nottingham, on a Sunday morning. It was
about the beginning of the month. On the
13th he purchased a similar quantity of
another chemist. On the 20th of the next
month, a man named John Barber, who
had been unwell six or seven weeks,
suddenly died. The young man who
purchased the arsenic was the brother of Mrs.
Barber. Suspicion was excited; and, to
Mrs. Barber's great surprise, she was
arrested, together with a man named Ingram,
a paramour, and they were both committed
for wilful murder. She had fancied that by
sending her brother for the arsenic, nobody
would think of her in the matter.

The case of Mrs. Cage was of a similar
kind. Mrs. Cage and her husband lived on
the worst terms. They were continually
quarrelling. One day he was taken very ill,
and died almost immediately. The body was
placed in a coffin, and was on its way to the
burial-ground, when somebody suggested to
the clergyman that there were very strong
suspicions as to the cause of the man's death.
The clergyman, therefore, postponed the
interment, and a coroner's inquest was called.
The examination and evidence of two medical