A wee little girl in Boston besought her mother, when she was going out shopping the other day, to bring her home a baby. The indulgent parent selected a pretty doll, and on her return made the presentation, expecting to see her daughter greatly pleased with it. But the precious child could hardly keep the tears from her eyes, as she disappointedly exclaimed, "I don't want that--I want a _meat_ baby!" THE LAPSE OF AGES.--328. An exchange asks, very innocently, if it is any harm for young ladies to sit in the lapse of ages? Another replies, that it all depends on the kind of ages selected. Those from eighteen to twenty-five it puts down as extra hazardous. PERILS OF THE "FOURTH ESTATE."--329. It takes three editors to start a paper in New Orleans--one to get killed in a duel, one to die with the yellow fever, and one to write an obituary of the defunct two. MODEL ADVERTISEMENTS.--330. Model of First-rate Advertisements for a Modern High-Pressure Sentimental Novel:-- Startling, terrific, paralyzing.--_Ditchville Chronicle._ We understand that the publishers of this extraordinary work, in consequence of the immense demand, were obliged to issue three editions at once, and that the united energies of steam and manual labour in New York, have in vain been employed to satisfy the incessant applications for it. On various occasions the police have been called in to protect the booksellers against the insolence of disappointed customers, while several suits for libel are pending against persons who, in a paroxysm of rage, have vented their spleen on the innocent authoress. The excitement has reached a fearful pitch, and all business has been brought to a stand by the absorbing devotion of the public to this great work of genius. In some cases the engineers on the railroads, in perusing it, have been so lost to a sense of duty, as to let the fires of their locomotives go out, and cause the stoppage of trains for hours. Porters may be seen sitting on their wheelbarrows at every corner enjoying its contents. Omnibus horses are growing fat from the refusal of drivers to ply the lash, until they have read it through, line by line, to the fearful catastrophe of the last page, and even the clamorous voice of the newsboy is no longer heard, for he sits crouching over its fascinating pages in his cheerless garret. On the first day of the sale, the doors of the book-stores were strongly barricaded, extra clerks were provided, and yet, despite these precautions, fearful riots took place among the contending crowd, in which, as the historians say, "neither age, sex, nor condition were respected." The truth is, that if many more such books are written in the country, there is great danger that agriculture, commerce, and manufactures will be abandoned, and we shall become nothing else than a nation of novel readers.--_The Flambeau of Literature._ NOT PARTICULAR.--331.