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If your potatoes are not yet taken up, delay no longer.

Collect all the stalks of flowers and vegetables, and all the fallen leaves of trees that you can get, and put them on your manure heap; this will make your garden neat, and they will be of great use to you to dig in as manure. You may transplant fruittrees, and others, this month. Also pruning may be begun as soon as the leaves are off, and by little and little, you can get all done before the leaves shoot again.

The directions for this month are but little different from those of the last; but as the frosts will now be beginning to cut off the annuals and other tender things, the garden will be apt to look slovenly if not well attended to. As this, however, is the time for trenching your ground, the dead leaves and rubbish may be dug in: and this will make you neat and do the ground good.

Plant bulbous roots.

Now is a good time to plant hedges, also to clip them, if not done before. Dig your ground over for neatness sake and to destroy the weeds. Clean well in young plantations.

PRECEPTS.

(By Thomas Randolph, an Old Poet.)

FIRST worship God ;-he that forgets to pray
Bids not himself good-morrow or good-day:
Let thy first labour be to fly from sin,

And serve Him first, whence all things did begin.

Honour thy parents to prolong thy end;
With them, though for a truth, do not contend;
Whoever makes his father's heart to bleed
Shall have a child that will avenge the deed.

Think that is just: 'tis not enough to do,
Unless thy very thoughts are upright too.

Swear not; an oath is like a dangerous dart
Which, shot, rebounds to strike the shooter's heart.

Defend the truth; for that who will not die,
A coward is, and gives himself the lie.

Honour the King, as sons their parents do,
For he's thy father and thy country's too.

To doubtful matters do not headlong run,
What's well left off were better not begun.

First think, and if thy thoughts approve thy will,
Then speak, and after, that thou speak'st fulfil.

So live with men as if God's curious eye
Did every where into thine actions pry.

ON THE MANAGEMENT OF CHILDREN.

NEARLY the whole of the following remarks are taken from that excellent little book called "Friendly advice on the management and education of children," &c.

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The cultivation of a peaceful and quiet temper not only necessary to happiness in the present world, but is an important part of our preparation for a better. Now in no respect have parents a greater power committed to them than in this. If parents are quick in resenting every trifling injury, quick in dealing blows, or in raising the tone of anger and reproach,-the children may be expected to have the same sort of disposition. How often are children suddenly snatched up and scolded even by parents who really love them ;-this is done from the passion of the moment, without any wish to injure the children,—but this is indeed the way to do a very serious injury to them, it is teaching them to indulge their angry passions, and leading them to think that there is nothing wrong in it, because their parents do the same. Besides, the

On the Management of Children. 517

most powerful instrument of governing children, or any body else, is kindness,-but this power is grievously injured by every act of violence and abuse. To rule others you will find it necessary first to control your own spirit.

"Be not changeable and uncertain in the management of your families." This is a very hard lesson; for what will appear quite innocent in a child at one time, and therefore have no objection made to it, will give great vexation at another time, when the parent is out of humour, and will then be found great fault with. But it is plain that this must have a very bad effect on the children, and make them to see that their conduct will be praised or blamed, not according to what they do, but according to the disposition their parent, or instructor, is in;-and this must tend to destroy, in their minds, that decided distinction which ought to be felt between right and wrong. If a parent would gain the respect and love of his child, he must be consistent with himself, and he must act from what he knows to be right, and not from the impulse of temper or present feeling.

Never tease your children, or put upon them unnecessary trials. Do not vex them about their little toys, or their cakes or apples. When they ask for any thing, always tell them kindly, and at once, whether you think it right for them or not,— and keep to what you say.

Never indulge the passionate temper of a child even at the earliest age. If a child is told to beat the table against which it has knocked its head, if he see his father smile when he lifts up his hand in anger against his mother,-if he is called a "brave boy" when he strikes his brother from whom he has received a blow,-what are we to expect from him when his will and his passions shall be strengthened by age?

Never allow your children to exercise a cruel,

oppressive disposition; shew them how base a thing it is to injure and oppress those weaker than themselves; do your utmost to bring them up in lovingkindness to one another.

Never suffer them to amuse themselves with tormenting animals,-whether they be flies, cockchafers, or other insects,-or horses, cows, asses, dogs, or any kind of creature. The boy who delights, during childhood, in oppressing his younger brothers and sisters, or any of his companions who are weaker than himself, or in persecuting the poor animals which are in his power, is little likely to prove, when a man, the kind neighbour, the affectionate husband, the tender parent, the considerate master. If you observe a child guilty of injustice or cruelty, ask him how he himself would like to be treated in the same manner. Teach your children these golden rules, and frequently bring them to try themselves by their directions:--

"Whatsoever things ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye to them."

"Be ye kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you.'

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"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."

Happy will it be, if you are able to imprint upon the hearts of your children the Christian law of love and mercy; and this you will be best prepared to do, by yourselves feeling that even the best of us are unworthy servants, dependent on the Divine mercy; that all our hope for this life and the next, is owing to the love and favour of God our Saviour, and that, therefore, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

On Destroying Bugs.

ON DESTROYING BUGS.

519

To the Editor of the Cottager's Monthly Visitor.

MR. EDITOR,

I Do not pretend to make it a matter of objection that you dignified so disagreeable a creature as this, by putting him in your Natural History department; on the contrary, I am glad to see that you rather consider what may be useful to your readers, than what may serve to exalt the character of your own book: and, as the creature alluded to is so grievous a subject of annoyance, and as it may be in the cottages of some of your readers, any information which may serve to lessen so great a nuisance may be of use. We were formerly accustomed to distinguish this creature by the appellation of the London Bug, but I fear that he is now as well known in many country places as he is in London; for, if it is conveyed in packages to any place and once begins to breed, it becomes extremely difficult to get rid of him. It does not appear that this creature was much known in England till after the time of the great fire in London, in the reign of King Charles the second, in the year 1667, and it is said that they were contained in the timber which was imported into England from other countries, and then, from that time, spread rapidly. It is indeed said that the foreign timber which has been brought over to build some of the new houses lately erected in London is full of them; and we know how difficult it is to get rid of them, when they have once been introduced into a house. Your method of destroying them with gunpowder I think might succeed; the train, as you observe, should be laid on a long piece of wood, and then set fire to; this requires great care; those who do not understand gunpowder might set too large a

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