their hands and arms for life, by pricking into the skin some design with India-ink, or with gunpowder dissolved in water. It can never be erased, and though in after years they would not grudge a purse of broad pieces to have this brand wiped away, it cannot be done.
Were it with some yellow, red, or green dye, it might be neutralized by introducing a decolorizing substance, but with India ink, gunpowder, carbon—never.
We heard of one unfortunate lad, whose companions in jest seized him and tattooed a star on the end of his nose! What an affliction it must have been to him all his life!
Girls are too sensible to indulge in such improper freaks. Perhaps not one in a million, be she ever so wild and thoughtless, would thus go to work to spoil her beauty. Sailors and soldiers, on the other hand, delight in covering their skin with these ineffaceable emblems. Some inscribe their names, others the emblems of their business, or the face of their lady-love. Many a one lives to regret it.
When Jules Bernadotte, son of a provincial attorney at Pau, was sergeant-major in the French revolution, he was a radical republican. He then pricked into the back of his hand the emblems of the French Republic, which was to be immortal. But when the Republic was ingloriously defunct, and Jules Berna-
