BITS ABOUT HOME MATTERS. By H. H., Author of "Verses" and "Bits of Travel." 1873 Contents. The Inhumanities of Parents--Corporal Punishment The Inhumanities of Parents--Needless Denials The Inhumanities of Parents--Rudeness Breaking the Will The Reign of Archelaus The Awkward Age A Day with a Courteous Mother Children in Nova Scotia The Republic of the Family The Ready-to-Halts The Descendants of Nabal "Boys not allowed" Half an Hour in a Railway Station A Genius for Affection Rainy Days Friends of the Prisoners A Companion for the Winter Choice of Colors The Apostle of Beauty English Lodging-Houses Wet the Clay The King's Friend Learning to speak Private Tyrants Margin The Fine Art of Smiling Death-bed Repentance The Correlation of Moral Forces A Simple Bill of Fare for a Christmas Dinner Children's Parties After-supper Talk Hysteria in Literature Jog Trot The Joyless American Spiritual Teething Glass Houses The Old-Clothes Monger in Journalism The Country Landlord's Side The Good Staff of Pleasure Wanted--a Home Bits of Talk. The Inhumanities of Parents--Corporal Punishment. Not long ago a Presbyterian minister in Western New York whipped his three-year-old boy to death, for refusing to say his prayers. The little fingers were broken; the tender flesh was bruised and actually mangled; strong men wept when they looked on the body; and the reverend murderer, after having been set free on bail, was glad to return and take refuge within the walls of his prison, to escape summary punishment at the hands of an outraged community. At the bare mention of such cruelty, every heart grew sick and faint; men and women were dumb with horror: only tears and a hot demand for instant retaliation availed. The question whether, after all, that baby martyr were not fortunate among his fellows, would, no doubt, be met by resentful astonishment. But it is a question which may well be asked, may well be pondered. Heart-rending as it is to think for an instant of the agonies which the poor child must have borne for some hours after his infant brain was too bewildered by terror and pain to understand what was required of him, it still cannot fail to occur to deeper reflection that the torture was short and small in comparison with what the next ten years might have held for him if he had lived. To earn entrance on the spiritual life by the briefest possible experience of the physical, is always "greater gain;" but how emphatically is it so when the conditions of life upon earth are sure to be unfavorable!