"If you wish to see exactly what the form of an octagon is, you can make one in this way. First cut out a piece of paper in the form of a square. This square will, of course, have four sides and four corners. Now, if you cut off the four corners, you will have four new sides, for at every place where you cut off a corner you will have a new side. These four new sides, together with the parts of the old sides that are left, will make eight sides, and so you will have an octagon. "If you wish your octagon to be regular, you must be careful how much you cut off at each corner. If you cut off too little, the new sides which you make will not be so long as what remains of the old ones. If you cut off too much, they will be longer. You had better cut off a little at first from each corner, all around, and then compare the new sides with what is left of the old ones. You can then cut off a little more, and so on, until you make your octagon nearly regular. "There are other much more exact modes of making octagons than this, but I cannot stop to describe them here." Must we have no more pennyworths of sense to such a monstrous quantity of verbiage than Mr. Abbott gives us here? We would defy any man to parody that. He could teach the penny-a-liners a trick of the trade worth knowing. The great Chrononhotonthologos, crying, "Go call a coach, and let a coach be called, And let the man that calleth be the caller, And when he calleth, let him nothing call But 'Coach! coach! coach! Oh, for a coach, ye gods!'" is comparatively a very Spartan for brevity. This may be a cheap way of writing books; but the books are a dear bargain to the buyer. A book is not necessarily ill adapted to a child because its ideas and expressions are over his head. Some books, that were not written for children and would shock all Mr. Abbott's most dearly cherished ideas, are still excellent reading for them. Walter Scott's poems and novels will please an intelligent child. Cooper's Leatherstocking tales will not be read by the lad of fourteen more eagerly than by his little sister who cannot understand half of them. A child fond of reading can have no more delightful book than the "Faerie Queene," unless it be the "Arabian Nights," which was not written as a "juvenile." There are pages by the score in "Robinson Crusoe" that a child cannot understand,--and it is all the better reading for him on that account. A child has a comfort in unintelligible words that few men can understand. Homer's "Iliad" is good reading, though only a small part may be comprehended. (We are not, however, so much in favor of mystery as to recommend the original Greek.) Do our children of the year 1860 ever read a book called "The Pilgrim's Progress"? Hawthorne's "Wonder-Book" is good for children, though better for adults.