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Humors of the Academy. “The Academy," sajs d’Alembert, “is the object of the secret or avowed ambition of all men or letters, 01 tho-e even who have made good or bad epi grams at its expense, epigrams of which it would be deprived if a place in it was less sought after.” M. Max- ime du Camp, now a member of the Academy, is a living example of the truth of this statement, for no one has more bitterly satirized the Immor tals than he Formerly the Academy used to offer its auteuils to distin guished persons, but at present mem bership is granted only after a formal demand has been made by the candi date, and even then he has to run the chances of a. ballot. This change dates from the publication of the translation of the “Confessions of St Augustin,” by Arnauld d’Andilly. The Academy charmed by the beauty of the work, offered the translator a seat in their midst. He thanked them, and smi lingly remarked: “Have we not an academy at Port Royal ?” The mem bers of the Academy after tha made a rule that they would never again so licit anyone, but must be solicited themselves. That rule’has excluded many a remarkable man from the il lustrious body. Louis Blanc is a liv ing instance, and Mahly a dead one. Tbe latter, when asked why he did not become a candidate, replied: “If I were in the Academy, people might ask: ‘ vVhy is he in it?’ I prefer that they should ask : ‘Why is he not in it’ ?” The epigrams made against the Academy are numberless. Pavilion, in a letter to Furetiere, writes : “I was taken, incognito, to the Academy, by M. Racine. I saw eleven persons there. One was listening, another sleeping, three others were quarrelling, another three went away without speaking one word.” After his recep tion at the Academy, Fontenelle re marked: “Tuerearenow only thirty- nine persons in France who have more wit that I.” It was the same Fonte- nelle who observed : “If we are thirty- nine in number, people go on their knees to us ; when ws are forty they make game of us.” It was a bon mot which excluded the Abbe Raynal from the Academy. He was pushing his way into the Palais de l’Institut amidst a dense crowd, to be present at the reception of a very mediocre author. “It strikes me,” he cried, “that it is more diffl- cult to get into this place than to be received in it.” Piron also was kept out for his famous premature epitaph : Ci-gil Piron, qui ne fui rien, Pas meme Academicien. On another occasion, Piron, passing in front of the Institut, remarked to a friend: “There are forty of them in there, qui ont de V esprit comme qua- treV it was Piron, too, who main tained that a newly received Academi cian’s discourse should consist of no more than three words: “Messieurs, grand merci.” Whereupon the Di rector ought to reply : “/ l n'y a pas de quoi.” At£cotch Graves. Everybody knows that tliert is no service at the grave in Scotland, al though the clergyman under whom the deceased “sat” is often, indeed usually, present. The hats of those in attendance may be taken off the mo ment after they have lowered the coffin into the grave just for an instant but even this is not always the case. This habit of dispensing with religious exercises had its origin, no doubt, In the Scotch horror of doing anything that might give a color to th# charge of following the Roman Catholio fashion of praying for the dead. The reading of a chapter of the Bible and a short prayer in the house before the cortege sets out for the church yard is the sole religious service, and the pre liminaries to this are sometimes of a kind to raise the idea that care is taken to disconnect it from the peculiar circumstances of the occasion. T wenty years ago I was at a funeral in the country at which the minister an 1 his colleague of the church to which the deceased belonged attended. After the company had assembled some de canters of wine and a tray with cake were brought in and set upon the table. The daughter of the deceased, herself a clergyman’s wife, then sug gested that the senior minister “should ask a blessing.” The request served as an excuse for a long prayer appropriate to the circumstances of the occasion which had brought us together, and after it was over cake and wine were handed round. Then a request was made that the junior clergyman “should return thanks,” and he readily enough indulged in a prayer, in whioh he gathered up the fragments suitable to the circum stances which his colleague had omit ted, and that was the whole religious service—simply a grace before and after meat. The Farm. Now is the time to exterminate the weed crop. Pull it all out btfore it goe^ to seed. Why Burn the Brush?—Some men burn all their brush from the trimmings of orchards, lawn trees, and shrubs. Brush cut up fine and put beneath shrubs and trees will add rapidly to their growth as it rots. Thf Value of Foduer Corn.— A correspondent of a Maine journal says: Three years ago this summer I fed thirty cows on one and one-half acres of fodder corn for two months. They were all giving milk and I was making from thirty to forty caus of eight and one half quarts daily. I fed four quarts of meal per head per day. Of course you will expect they had a pasture to run in. They did have a ^pasture; the thirty cows had about forty acres of brush pasture, not five of which was high enough to bear Eng lish grasses. The cows all looked well; in fact, they seemed to thrive on that feed, and for a dairy of native cows picked up in the country, the yield of milk was at least an average with other herds. But this is not all. I planted twenty five acres of field corn, and on the fodder wintered forty-five cows with the help of about fifteen tons of meadow hay and green oats, and by adding two quarts of cottonseed meal and two quarts of shorts, I got about the same amount of milk and milked about the same number of cows. In January I bought some new milkers and sold fourteen dry or nearly dry cows to the butcher. Our nalk was all sold to one man and at an advance above others; first, because we made so much, and second, because of quality. Five acres of the coin were planted on fertilizers, the balance on manure in the hill. That cn fertilizers was nothing but fodder. It was all old pasture, planted the summer be fore, and sowed with rye and cut green for soiling. I raised about 1,800 bush els of ears of corn. I consider the fod der paid for all the labor on the corn, or the corn paid for the fodder, which ever way you like. Now, as to raising your clover or other fine grasses, how much land will it take to keep that stock ? As to Hungarian, it takes good land to raise two tons of dried fodder per acre, and for soiling I had rather have oats, rye or corn to feed green. Common Sense ^bout the Piano. Little girls fear the piano, and long for the time when, having at last mas tered its difficulties, they will not be called upon to play upon it any more; while numberless great girls regard it as one of the many nuisances which they must put up with until they get married. Once, however, libejate young women from that piano to whioh like serfs they have so long been “assigned” but not “attached” and some of them will take to cultiva ting it for its own sake ; while the re mainder will at least spare both them selves and their friends a considerable amount of annoyance. The enormous difficulty of modern pianoforte music constitutes in itself a reason why in the education of young girls the piano should not, like “danc ing and deportment,” be made obliga tory. A woman can get through life so well without playing the piano; and for a few shillings, or even in extreme cases for a single shilling, she can, if her lot happens to be cast in London, hear from time to time the finest players that this great piano forte-playing age has ever produced. It is not because the piano is unworthy of her attention that woman shmld be liberated from the task work im posed upon her in connection with it. It is because music, like every other art, demands from its votaries special gifts and inclinations, and because among women who are thus endowed it is a mistake to suppose that the piano is the only instrument suitable to them. Let it be understood in the first place that it is no more a disgraoe for a young lady not to play the piano than it is a disgrace for her not to draw, to paint, or to model; and in the second place, that if she does mean to play some instrument it is a mistake for her to restrict herself as a matter of course to the piano. Next to the or gan, the piano is, thanks to the or chestral effects which it can be made produce, the finest instrument in the world ; and it is the only instrument for which every great composer writes as a matter of course, and for which every great composer’s orchestral works are arranged in reduced form. To praise at the expense cf the piano the violin, whioh—except when tourd de force are indulged in—yields like the human voice but a single note, is a very common f iling, but it is one that we should not ourselves care to undertake. The violin to be effective in a truly musical sense must, like the human voice, be accompanied either by the orchestra or by the pianoforte, or by other members of the violin family. The pianoforte is (putting aside, of course, the too colossal organ) the only instrument whicn, tor har monic as well arf melodic purposes, is complete in itself and which is really an orchestra in little. There are good reapons, then, why all who care much for music should study the piano but no reason why they should study the piano exclu sively. Often in the same family there are two, three, and even four pianists. How much and how advantageously the musical domain of such a family would be increased if, with or with out neglect of the piano, the in strumeuts of the violin family were taken up, with a view not necessarily to stdng q lartets, but at least to the numerous pieces written by great composers foi violin or violincello.and piano. “The violin—I include always the viola and violincello —is no doubt,” says Mr. Hullah in hi- excel lent little work on ‘ Music in the House,” “a difficult instrument; but the difficulty ofacq firing a serviceable amount of skill on it has been exagger ated. To become a Joachim, a Holmes, or a Piatti, is the woik of a lifetime, even for men gifted with equal apti tude and perseverance to these, turned to account under skilful guidance and at the right time of life, and supple mented and encouraged by a thousand circumstances as impossible to take account of as to bring about aud fore see. But there is an amount of skill below—very much balow—that of art ists of this class which, if accompa nied by feeling taste, and intelligence, may contribute largely to the variety and agreeableness of music in the house.” It may be hoped that in a few years, without the number of our domestio pianists being too much di minished, that of our d omestic violin ists will be considerably increased. Some half-dozen lady violinists have appeared this season in London, at public concerts, who possess the very highest merit; and at a half-private, half-public concert given rec ntly at Stafford H >use for the benefit of a charity, the chief attraction was a string band consisting of no fewer than twenty-four lady executants, The diversion, then, of feminine talent from the piano toward* the violin, is not a movement which has to be orig inated ; it needs only to be encouraged. Madame Ste. Hilaire’s Neck- lace. The wife of the great French natu ralist, M. Geoffroy Ste. Hilaire, once lost a handsome diamond necklace, and the house was in an uproar in consequence of the vanished bauble. Incidentally the naturalist mentioned th.it a favorite baboon, which he kept upstairs, had been pi lying f »r some days past with a necklace precisely similar to the one described. He was indignantly asked why he had not taken the necklace from the animal, “I thought that it belonged to him,” calmly made answer M. Geoffroy Ste. Hilaire. The naturalist had lived so long with animals, he had become so thoroughly absorbed in their habits and idiosyncrasies, that he could see no kind of incongruity in a monkey possessing a diamond necklace. Thus Fransham, the Norwich polytheisf, when somebody left him a legacy to £25, proposed to buy a pony with the money. It was notorious that he could not ride, and he was asked what he wanted a horse for. “To walk about with and talk to,” was his reply. A Welsh Cure for the Ague. Being in the new church of Aber, Carnarvonshire, lately, I was looking at the old font, brought from the ancient church there when it was demolished to make room for the present new edifice, and noticing four circular hollows on the rim, suggested that the ancient cover or canopy of the font probably sprang from them or fitted into them. “ Nay,” said the venerable rector; “my people say that they were caused by scraping away the stone; dust from the ohurch font mixed in water and drunk early in the morning being considered a cure fo^tbe ague.” For Sprain.—Bathe with arnica di luted with water, and bandage with soft flannel moistened with the same. A sprained wrist thus treated will grow well and strong in a few days. Billet-Doux. Rousseau gives a rule for their com position, which would make it appear a matter of the utmost ease. “Begin without knowing what you are going to say ” advises he, “aud end without knowing what you have said.” That may be all very well, aud there are tome who, no doubt, have been able to do it. The theological John Knox probably acted ou the first part of tbe maxim. H % first love letter was a composition that it is difficult to imag ine any could have deliberately pre meditated. It was enormously long, reads for the most part like a very dull sermon, and its first sentence—ad dressed to his “Deirlibelovit sister”— when afterward printed made eigh teen lines of close type. Falstatf’s letter, duplicate copies of which served for tne two merry wives of Windsor, may possibly have been an extempore effusion, such as Rousseau recom mends. It is just what the witty old scape-grace might be imagined to sit down and scribble off hand, feeling q dte sure that almost anything in the shape of a letter would answer his pur pose. “Y m are not young, no more am I; go to, then, there’s sympathy. You are merry, so am I ; ha, ha ! then there’s more sympathy. You love sack, so do I; would you desire better sympathy ?” The ordinary billet-doux,however,is a far more serious affair than auy thing Falstatt was capable of writing, and whether ponderously spun out in loDg winded periods like Knox’s or con centrated and condensed like Steele’s, the love letter has probably always been the occasion of a vast amount of brain cudgelling. “Dear Mistress Spurlock,” wrote Steele, “I am'tired of calling you by that name; therefore say a day when you will take that of, nuadame, your devoted, humble ser vant, Richard Steele.” Nothing looks simpler than this; but how many preliminary experiments Steele had made, how many other forms of pro posal he had concocted, aud through how many various phases this crisp, neat little billet had gradually devel oped, who shall say ? Steele certainly has sometimes been accredited with rather remarkable aptftude in framing correspondence of this sort, but his reputation has been based on his past matrimonial performances,which were very curious, certainly, but can not be regarded as any criterion of his faculty In this line before marriage. “Dear Prue,” he writes to his wife on one occasion, “I am very sleepy and tired, Wifi could not think of closing ■ny eyes till I nad told you I am, c ear est creature, your most affectionate, faithful husband, Richard Steele.” There are so many of these singular little billets-doux scattered here and there in the published correspondence of this writer that for a time one is in clined to regard them as genuine man ifestations of an uxorious disposition. Steele seems always to have been writing to “Dear Prue” these consider ate, devoted little notes. “Djar Prue, don’t be displeased that I do not come home till 11 o’clock.—Yours ever.” “Foreive me dining abroad, and let Will carry the papers to Buckley’s.— Y rnr fond, devoted R. 8.” Three or four times a day he would be sending offsueh dispatches as these : “I beg of you not to be impatient, though it be an hour before you see me.” There is, however, one of these notes which seems to show that such effusions were not altogether spontaneous. “Dear Prue: It is a strange thing because you are handsome that you will no: behave yourself with the obedience that people of worse features do; but that I must be always giving you an acoount of every trifle and minute of my time. I send you this to tell you I am waiting to be sent for again when my Lord Wharton is stirring.” * Fashion. Outside garments, if worn at all, seem necessarily expensive this season because they are of lace, and real lace is and must be costly. Light imita tions are not now considered good style even by those who do not pretend to the “real.” Spanish laces are the rage of the hour, and if these are not good they show their poverty so plainly that few have the courage to display them in a large way. In rioh lace the large mantles are beautiful and so daintily gathered up in grace ful folds and ruched and ribboned that it is difficult to tell what the precise form is until they are arranged upon the person, and then it is seen that they have the mantle shape, and that the folds fall naturally over and in to the arm, and that the fronts are fre quently shirred and finished with more ribbons at the waist line; a revi val, in fact, of tbe mantle fiuish of many years ago. Smaller conceptions are the most exquisite things imaginable. Yet they are so enriched by ruched lace and trimmings, and the fabric of which they are composed is so costly, that a small garment represents a high figure. Oue thing is to be observed, that all garments (outside) that are successful of late years outline the form more or less by being cut to fit it or gathered in to its shape. Attempts have been made to revive the long scarf, straight upon the back and hanging straight down in front; but they have been comparative failures. Shape, outline, i* demanded, and the draped oostume with more or less of modification will probably last out this generation and constitute the underlying principle in whatever changes are introduced. 8ummer Cloaks. Cloaks in summer seem a misnomer, aud excepting as dust protectors, useless. Yet they are not so. Oddly enough, the caprice of the season in outside garments Is for the two ex tremes—very large, in fact, Mother Hubbard cloaks, aud capes or fichus so small that they do not reaih rhe line of the waist. These summer Mother Hubbards are extremely elegant. They are made of outlined Spanish lace, lined with silk and profusely trimmed with lace and ribbons, and are very expensive garments. But they are very handsome and quaintly graceful, and, though light and cool, are perfectly protective and give an air of distinction to the sum uer dress of a middle-aged lady who h it very seldom possesses. These leaks are quite the novelty of the season, and show that the “Mother Hubbard’* idea was not so ephemeral as was at first supposed. To be sure, it has been greatly improved and modified. It is still hideous in heavy cloths, but the fine thin wools silk lined, the rich laces lined with silk and the present fashion of making, which has re moved all the fulness from the shoul der and drawn it closely in to the fig ure, render it really becoming to slen der women. Brennan’s Torpedo. A new torpedo has been invented in Australia, and is thus described: Its motive power is not compressed air, neither is it contained in the body of the torpedo. To propel the weapon through the water at a speed of from fifteen to twenty knots an hour for 1,000 yards, a separate engine, or at least a special connection with an ex isting one, is necessary. Tuis engine drives two drums, about three feet in diameter, with a velocity at their peri pheries of 100 feet per second. Their duty is to wind in two fine steel wires No. 18 gauge, the same a3 used in the deep-sea sounding apparatus of Sir William Thompson. The rapid un coiling of these wires from two small corresponding reels in the belly of the fish imp rts to them, as may readily be conceived, an extremely high veloc ity. The reels are connected with the shafts of the two propellers which drive the torpedo through the water. The propellers work, as has long beer known to be necessary to insure straight running, in opposite diree tions and both in one line, the shaft of one being hollow and containing the shaft of the other. At first sight it would seem as if hauling a torpedo backward by two wires was a curious way speeding it “full speed ahead,” but it is found in practice that the amount of “drag” is so small, as compared with the power utilized in spinning the reels that give motion to the propellers, that it may be left out of calculation alto gether. The steering-gear of the Brennan is an ingenious contrivance whereby the relative velocities of the two driving drums, and consequently of the two propellers, can be varied at any moment. The perpendicular rud der, whioh is very sensitive, is reacted on by Ihe screws, and in this way the torpedo may be made to follow as tor tuous a path as a figure skater. The course the torpedo is taking is indica ted to the operator by a slight steel telescopic mast carrying a pennon, which, when not in use, is folded along the back of the torpedo. Melons, in their season, suggests the ■New England Farmer, ought to be plenty on every farmer's table. They require noacooking, mage an ever weloorne dessert, and are not only bet ter and cheaper, but more wholesome than much of the pastry which they would or might replaoe.