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Few animals have been the cause, perhaps, of so many superstitions as the common domestic Cat; most of them are too well known here to require repetition, but the still prevalent, popular prejudice that this creature sucks the breath of sleepers, especially children, and thereby kills them, has been signally refuted by modern naturalists, who observe, that even if it were capable of drawing a person's breath thus, the construction of its mouth renders it impossible to impede the respiration of the slumberer through mouth and nostrils at the same time; this vulgar superstition probably arose from cats liking to lie warm, and nestling consequently in beds, cribs, and cradles.

Think of all the babies that were rocked to sleep in it it's a real relic." Phœbe, unacquainted with the value of cradles, was silently endeavoring to determine the proper amount for a first bid. She was relieved to hear a woman's voice call, "Twenty-five cents." "Twenty-five I have, twenty-five," called the auctioneer. "Make it thirty." "Thirty," said Phœbe. "Forty," came from the other woman.

Bitter experience had impressed very deeply on the Netherlanders the great precept that faith would never be kept with heretics. The present generation had therefore been taught from their cradles to believe that the word peace in Spanish mouths simply meant the Holy Inquisition.

Their argument was that by this method they could accumulate a fair amount of dust, and ran just as good chances of a "strike" as the next fellow. Furthermore, they had no tools, no knowledge and no time to make cradles. Those implements had to be very accurately constructed. We discussed this matter almost every evening. Yank was a great believer in improving the efficiency of our equipment.

Numberless are the stories told by fond mothers of the wonderful things uttered by their babies, shortly after they have left their cradles. The most striking peculiarity running through them all is the astonishing audacity with which the child treats the most sacred things. He or she seems to have no sense of awe.

"You're the most interesting nation in the world. One never gets to the end of your hatred of the nuance. The sense of the suitable, the harmony of parts what on earth were you doomed to do that, to be punished sufficiently in advance, you had to be deprived of it in your very cradles?

First of all, the royal cells, which are exceptional, and contrived somewhat in the shape of an acorn; then the large cells destined for the rearing of males and storing of provisions when flowers super-abound; and the small cells, serving as workers' cradles and ordinary store-rooms, which occupy normally about four-fifths of the built-over surface of the hive.

The last-named contrivances, however, were only unsuccessful attempts to solve a problem which had effectually baffled hundreds of preceding inventors. His odd and eccentric contrivances often excited great wonder amongst the Killingworth villagers. He won the women’s admiration by connecting their cradles with the smoke-jack, and making them self-acting.

Catholics and Protestants all stood shoulder to shoulder that night to defend their firesides against the foreign foe, while mothers laid their sleeping children on the ground that they might fill their cradles with powder and ball, which they industriously brought to the soldiers. The less energetic women fell upon their knees in the street, and prayed aloud through the anxious night.

The ermine was sold at auction, mitres were objects of public barter, Church preferments were bestowed upon female children in their cradles. Yet there was hope in France, notwithstanding that the Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis, the foundation of the liberties of the Gallican Church, had been annulled by Francis, who had divided the seamless garment of Church patronage with Leo.