oyed in any
manufacturing establishment, unless such child shall have attended some
public or private day-school, where instruction is given by a teacher
qualified according to law to teach orthography, reading, writing,
English grammar, geography, arithmetic, and good behaviour, at least one
term of eleven weeks of the twelve months next preceding the time of
such employment, and for the same period during any and every twelve
months in which such child shall be so employed."_

Although my salt-fish friends are probably very familiar with
sea-lawyers, the general reader may be astonished to see any allusion to
law made by a sea-captain. I therefore beg to inform him, that the
following observations on a most interesting point are furnished me by a
friend who is legitimately at home in that complicated business, and who
devoted much attention to the study of the method by which land is
conveyed in the United States with so much ease and so little expense:--

"In America all conveyances of land, whether absolute or by way of
mortgage only, are, with the exception of some chattel interests,
required to be registered within a fixed or a reasonable time after
their execution. Registration is constructive notice to all the world;
if not registered, a deed is only valid against the parties to it and
the heirs and devisees of the grantor. Generally, however, notice
obtained by a purchaser previous to his purchase, will, if clearly
proved, prevent his taking the advantage, though he may have been
beforehand in registering his own title.

"By the old laws of Massachusetts, all deeds of conveyance were required
to be recorded, 'that neither creditors might be defrauded, nor courts
troubled with vexatious suits and endless contentions.' In consequence
of the number of registers established in each county--and the
excellence of their arrangements, no inconvenience results from the
accumulation of deeds, notwithstanding the early period to which they go
back. In register for Suffolk county, Massachusetts, are to be seen
copies of deeds from 1640 down to the present time. They are bound up in
640 volumes, and do not as yet take up much space. They have lately
multiplied in an increasing ratio, the volumes having risen from 250 to
their present number in the last 25 years.

"The register for Philadelphia county, Pennsylvania, contains within a
moderate compass deeds from 1683 downwards. They are referred to by
indices on the follo