Nov. 18.
A peculiar craze has broken out in London that is causing saudi annoyance and loss those affected by its vagaries. Someone began the evil practice of scratching the large panes of glass in shop windows with a diamond,—Walking ally along the street, the culprit will trail the hand in which he holds the instrument across the pane and thus ruin a valuable piece of property, It is impossible to say who was the fool who began this practice but it seems that he has many imitators and, as it is to next to impossible to defect the perpetrator in the act, much injury is inflteted on unoffending people, with only the remotest chance that the rascal who caused it shall be punished for his crime, It is somewhat curious to speculate on the underlying thought, or impulse, that leads so many' people, with idle hands, to indulge in this mischievous prank, The great majority of the culprits are imi-the faculty of imitation strong in children—and in monkeys, by the way—so it is safe to conclude that those who followed the leader in this nefarious gai saple of low intelligence. childish pro-density to imitate is strong i. them and to this they have added their adult capacity for malevolence. The mean act is, them, a piquant joke, with ice of adventure thrown in, for they are well aware that if, by tome chance, they are detected they will suffer for their foolish~ ness, Another familiar characteristic of the childish mind is curiosity. This impels children to touch everything within their each. How often has nurse to cry "Don't touch" to the child who wants to finger things. They will yun their hands along paling, when out walking, and often get their fingers injured by poking them into unwanted places. It will be remembered that the great Dr. Johnson never quite overcome this juvenile habit and would touch every pos: in Fleet street as -often as he succeeds. Henceforth he is continually pushing himself into prominence and the-chief task of his elders is to repress-him or "keep him in his place" as they put it. Give him a piece of chalk and he will decorate every plane surface within his reach with an assiduity that will lacking in his school exercises. Primeval man, before letter: were invented, expressed himself by drawings,' sometimes rude, sometimes wonderfully accurate on the walls of his cave dwelling. The grafiti, scribbled lam-
Poons or caricature: the walls of buried cities or in catacombs, are illustrations of this same bias towards self-expression, as is the itch that com~ pels the budding pact to tell the world that the sun sets in the west or that pale moonbeams silver the trees. It flowers in the writings of genius and rises to sublimity in the declamations of the prophets.
These varied impulses are at the root of the mischief-making of those who wantonly scratch plate glass windows in the streets of London. But there is an added element in their evil doing. It is the element of cruelty. It has been salt that nothing more reveals the inmost character of a man than the things he finds amusing. There is an unplumbed depth of depravity in a man who will inflict pain on a dog. say, for fun. We read with shrinking the accounts we have to publish sometimes of the cruelties inflicted by bandits on their victims or by harridaa beldames on the unfortunate slave girls they have purchased for immoral purposes. As chan. ty, charitableness, or kindness: is the highest virtue to which man may attain so cruelty is the lowest vice into which he can sink, It is Satanic for it grows on those addicted to it with its practice. The wise old Hebrew lawgiver imposed-a limit on the punishment that might be imposed on, even, a wicked mat "Forty stripes shall he give him and not exceed" ran the 1a And the reason for this restric tion is also striking. It was "lest thy brother should seem vile unto thee." There is, evidently, a horrible fascination in the power to inflict torture. Its exercise makes the victim seem, not pitiable, but "vile": a cre: ture to be trampled underfoot like a viper. Therefore every exhibition of this tendency to cruelty ought to be repressed with ruthless severity. peranmbulated that thoroughfare. Curiosity leads to peeping and prying in childhood but it is a valuable endowment, nevertheless. In superior minds it impels to scientific research and is the mother of invention, Newton's curiosity regarding the cause of the fall of an apple led to the epoch-making discovery of the law of gravitation. Arising out of curiosity comes the impulse to experiment. George Washington experimented with his axe on the cherry tree and the Marquis of Worcester, with more prescience, Perimented with the bouncing Nid of a boiling tea-kettle and Yaid the foundation of the invention of the steam-engine. Every man has, in himself, a psychological necessity for -self-expression. The new-born child heralds his advent into this strange world with a ery; alls attention to himself. Very soon he is struggling to make himself understood. His organs of speech are not developed nor his brain capable of directing but he struggles to over-his incapacity and, at last,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.