e Thousand Valuable Receipts, for
Twenty-five Cents," that ammonia was good for stings, I applied
ammonia liberally to that bleeding child, until she became absolutely
frantic. Her screams attracted Mrs. W. to the scene, and she
exclaimed:

"Have you no more sense than to put ammonia on raw flesh like that?" I
pointed to the "Three Thousand Valuable Receipts, for Twenty-five
Cents," which she immediately picked up and threw out of the window.
The child ultimately recovered, but from that day abhorred silk
culture in all its branches. Still the industry went on. The children
were so stung by the thorns that the work devolved on me, and it was a
task most fearful. There is a poison in the thorn of the osage-orange
that not only makes the pain exquisite, but swells one up as though he
had been stung all over by bees, or had chronic dropsy. My hands and
arms were puffed up, and my face looked as though I had been in a
prize-fight. As I observed to Mrs. W., however, these were minor
difficulties, and we could put up with them in consideration of the
large profits which would ensue. One day one of the servants--they are
always going around and turning things up side down--left one of the
frames on the floor, and all the worms, to the number of several
hundred, scattered themselves profusely about the house, and without
any reference to the comfort or convenience of the family. If you
opened the flour barrel, there was a silk worm. They pervaded the
sugar and crawled into the cream. You found them in bed and the mash
was awful. How many were trodden into the parlor carpet can never be
known. This, too, was but an episode; and as the worms grew in size
and began to spin their cocoons, the process was quite interesting,
and even Mrs. W. overcame her repugnance to the crawling little
wretches.

I was startled one day, as I was feeding my silk-worms, who were
consuming the osage-orange leaves at the rate of a bushel a day,
making two bushels of litter, to hear Mrs. W. abruptly ask:

"W., what is a consumer?" The unexpectedness of the interrogation
found me at fault for a moment; but reflecting a little while and
looking at the silk-worms, I concluded the best way to put it was: "A
consumer, my dear, is--well, a consumer in this country is one who
consumes." Thinking that no exception could be taken to such a
definition, I was triumphant.

"W.," said that pertinacious person, "you don't hang together well, if
any. You said th