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                           GREAT MYSTERIES

                         AND LITTLE PLAGUES.

                            BY JOHN NEAL.


    BOSTON:
    ROBERTS BROTHERS.
    1870.

    Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by
    ROBERTS BROTHERS,
    In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Dist. of
    Massachusetts.

    STEREOTYPED BY REGAN & LEADBEATER,
    55 Water Street.



[Illustration: CHILDREN--WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR?

"I'll give oo a _kith_ if oo want one!"]




PREFACE.


I hate prefaces; and the older I grow, the more I hate them, and the
more unwilling I am to transgress--in that way--with my eyes open.

But something must be said, I suppose, if only by way of an
advertisement, or warning.

When I had finished what one of my daughters persists in calling my
"NAUGHTY-BIOGRAPHY," and the other, "PERSONALITIES"--while my hair has
grown visibly thinner, I will not say under what kind of domestic
remonstrance from another quarter, and a very amiable, though witty
somebody writes it "_Maundering_ Recollections"--I had an idea that, if
I went further, I might be found "painting the lily, gilding refined
gold," etc., etc., and so I pulled up--for the present.

But this little book was already under way. I had promised it, and such
promises I