We halt suddenly. “Back! back!” says the conductor. The sleepers start to their feet; the old maid in the corner gives a little hysterical shriek; brakemen, conductor, and engineer jump off, push back their hats, and gaze nervously down the road. “What’s the matter?” echo scores of anxious voices. “What’s the matter?” Oh, nothing; only a mother made childless: only a little form--five minutes ago bounding with happy life--lying a mangled corpse upon the track. The engineer says, with an oath, that “the child was a fool not to get out of the way,” and sends one of the hands back to pick up the dismembered limbs and carry them to its mother, who forbade even the winds of heaven to blow too roughly on her boy; then he gives the “iron horse” a fresh impetus, and we dash on; imagination paints a scene in yonder house which many a frantic parent will recognize; and from which (even in thought) we turn shuddering away--while the weary mother in the corner covers her fretful babe with kisses, and thanks God, through her tears, that her loving arms are still its sheltering fold. NEWSPAPER-DOM. It is beyond my comprehension how Methusaleh lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years without a newspaper; or, what the mischief Noah did, during that “forty days” shower, when he had exhausted the study of Natural History. It makes me yawn to think of it. Or what later generations did, the famished half-hour before meals; or, when traveling, when the old stage-coach crept up a steep hill, some dusty hot summer noon. Shade of Franklin! how they must have been _ennuyéd_! How did they ever know when flour had “riz”--or what was the market price of pork, small tooth combs, cotton, wool, and molasses? How did they know whether Queen Victoria had “made her brother an uncle or an aunt?” What christianized gouty old men and snappish old ladies? What kept the old maids from making mince-meat of pretty young girls? What did love-sick damsels do for “sweet bits of poetry” and “touching continued stories?” Where did their papas find a solace when the coffee was muddy, the toast smoked, and the beef-steak raw, or done to leather? What did cab-drivers do, while waiting for a tardy patron? What did draymen do, when there was “a great calm” at the dry-goods store of Go Ahead & Co.? What screen did husbands dodge behind, when their wives asked them for money?