“Yes, Fanny, dear,” said Thomas, coming from behind the curtain and stooping to kiss his wife. “Miss Laura has saved you and Bella, and me too, for I could’nt have lived if you had died; and has found me work; and all without making one great present, or doing anything one could speak about. I’ll tell you what it is, wife, dear, Miss Isabel does all for the best, but it is just as she feels at the moment. Now Miss Laura—if I may be so bold to speak, Miss—Miss Laura does not give to please her own feelings, but to do good. I can’t say it well, but do you say it for me, Miss; I want Fanny to know the right words, to teach the little ones by-and-bye. You know what I wish to say, Miss Laura.” “Yes Thomas,” said Laura, blushing, “but I do not say you are right. You mean, I think, that my sister acts from impulse, and I from principle. Is that it?” “I suppose that’s it, Miss,” said Thomas, considering, and apparently not quite satisfied. “You have no harder meaning, I am sure,” said Laura, quietly, “because I love my sister very much.” “Certainly not, Miss,” returned Thomas. “But, myself, if I may take the liberty of gratefully saying so, I prefer to be acted to on principle, and think it a good deal better than impulse.” CHIPS. TORTURE IN THE WAY OF BUSINESS. The mention in a recent number of the extreme cruelty practised on calves, has drawn forth the following statement from a correspondent,—a clergyman in Bedfordshire:— “A member of my family was witness to the following act of barbarity, viz., that of plucking the feathers from a duck while yet alive. Upon being expostulated with, the man replied that it was a common practice,—‘we _half_ break their necks, then pluck them while they are warm, and then finish them off.’ This act of cruelty was witnessed in Brighton Market. If the above will at all assist you in exposing the atrocities which are practised on the brute creation, I shall be thankful. The public generally (save a few gross sensualists) have only, it is to be hoped, to be told what is practised on many articles of consumption, to make them protest against such wanton insults on God’s workmanship.” The only means of accounting for such irrational cruelty, is the supposition that the offending poulterers imagine ducks to be endowed by nature with no more feeling than feather-beds.