Gatling (our countryman, you know) has invented a Battery Gun. They have
been trying this gun over at Shoeburyness (how is that, for a name?) in
England, to see whether they had not better order a few, in time for the
next war. It seems that they conducted their experiments by firing at
"dummies, representing men." (Oh, if they had _only_ had some of our
American Dummies there, who Represent Men so inadequately.) There were
136 of these _simulacra_, "99 of whom," says the report "would have been
killed." That is, if it had been possible to kill them. In fact, they
would have been killed four or five times over. "Kilt intirely."

We shall always feel that a great opportunity was here lost of ridding
the country of certain nuisances, who, if anything at all, are _worse_
than dummies, and deserve not four only, but four hundred balls in them,
"forty-two one-hundredths of an inch in diameter," or even larger. There
are so many, it would be useless to attempt to specify them: and
besides, everybody knows who they are. We would begin with the
Politicians, and end with the Brokers. And then the Millennium would
begin, "sure pop."

* * * * *

TROUBLE FOR THE RISING GENERATION.

Mr. PUNCHINELLO has often thought with what melancholy feelings the
naughty boys must gaze upon a fine grove of growing birches; but what
pangs would a knowing child experience upon finding himself in Randolph
county, Illinois, where they raise twelve bushels of castor-oil beans to
the acre! Of what depths of juvenile wretchedness and precocious
misanthropy is that crop suggestive! We see it all--the anxious
parent--the solemn doctor--the writhing patient--the glass--the spoon!