corroboration to the reports of fasting girls that crop up from time to
time. In an attempt to prove that eating is merely ‘an acquired habit,’
he persisted in going without food for six days, and expects in time
to be able to do without nourishment for a much longer period! His
experiments, he asserts, prove three things: First, that all stories of
terrible agony in starvation are nonsense; second, that fasting really
improved his intelligence; and third, that a person who has fasted
six days has no ravenous appetite. This, however, we should think is
accounted for by the sufferer feeling quite past eating at a certain
stage of starvation.—The problem of how to live on sixpence a day has
been elucidated by a London physician, who writing in advocacy of
vegetarianism, affirms that he knows many persons who keep themselves
strong and well on that sum. He further says: ‘I have myself lived and
maintained my full weight and power to work on threepence a day, and
I have no doubt at all that I could live very well on a penny a day.’
The ‘penny restaurant’ lately announced in New York, where a small cup
of coffee, bread and butter, pork and beans, a slice of corned beef,
oatmeal, and boiled rice, may be obtained at a cost of one cent for
each item, offers the very means of carrying out this theory. What
kind of ‘living’ could be enjoyed on that insignificant sum, is not
explained by the learned experimenter; but without pushing theory to
such an extreme, it is evident that a more careful and judicious outlay
of small incomes would enable many unthinking persons to live well and
economically, who may now deem such a thing impossible.
The use of horse-flesh as an article of food has made great progress
in Paris, where about a thousand horses per week are said to be
slaughtered, the animals even being imported for that purpose. It is
said that during the Exhibition, the hippophagists of Paris intend
giving a banquet once a month to the journalists of all nations, where
horse and ass flesh prepared in every seductive form will be served
up.—The snail is becoming another fashionable article of diet in
France, and for some time past a particular place has been appropriated
for their sale in the Paris fish-markets. Snails, says one of the
French journals, were highly esteemed by the Romans, our masters
in gastronomy, and are now raised in many of the departments with
success. In the sixteenth century the Capuchins of Fribourg possessed
the art of fattening snails—an art not lost in our day, for in Lorraine
and Burgundy they raise excellent snails, which find sure demand in
the Paris market. There are now more than fifty restaurants and more
than a thousand private tables in Paris where snails are accepted as a
delicacy by upwards of ten thousand consumers; the monthly consumption
of this mollusc being estimated at half a million. Frank Buckland tells
us that snails are becoming scarce in the neighbourhood of London,
where for some time snail-collecting has been a regular trade.
It is a curious fact that so many dwellings once the homes of poets
should have been public-houses at one time or another. Burns’s native
cottage was a house of this description; the house in which Moore
was born was a whisky-shop; and Shelley’s house at Great Marlow, a
beer-shop. Even Coleridge’s residence at Nether Stowey, the very house
in which the poet composed his sweet _Ode to the Nightingale_, became
an ordinary beer-house. A house in which James Montgomery lived for
forty years at Sheffield was a beer-shop; and the birthplace of Kirke
White is now a house for retailing intoxicating beverages.
Many facts relating to foreign countries, which strike Englishmen
as being curious to a degree, reach us from time to time. A Spanish
soldier, we are told, will fight for a week on an empty stomach,
provided he can look forward to playing his guitar on the seventh day.
In his country, if a bull intended for the fight falls ill, the animal
is sent to an infirmary. The chief toreador Frasculeo has a fortune of
two million francs; his combat costume represents one hundred thousand
francs in diamonds alone; he is courted by the highest society in
Madrid, is a member of the chief aristocratic club; yet his wife is
a fishmonger’s daughter, and still helps her mother in the market.
On days when her husband performs she sits at her balcony with her
children to receive couriers, who come on horseback waving a white flag
as a sign of success in the arena.—The account of how a titled lady in
Russia has discovered to her cost the penalties of expressing in too
emphatic a manner her disapproval of her governess’s behaviour, will,
if true, convey a curious idea of some social customs in that country.
The Princess Manweloff had a habit of striking her governess, a lady
of noble birth, and the latter complained of her to the local justice.
In this instance the law was a respecter of persons, and the Princess
was ordered three days’ detention in her own house. The governess
was dissatisfied, and appealed to a higher court, which sentenced
the defendant to three months’ imprisonment in the common jail.—As
a curious fact, it has been noted by Sir Samuel Baker that a negro
has never been known to tame a wild elephant or any wild animal. The
elephants employed by the ancient Carthaginians and Romans were trained
by Arabs and others, never by negroes. It had often struck Sir Samuel
as very distressing that the little children in Africa never had a pet
animal; and though he often offered rewards for young elephants, he
never succeeded in getting one alive.
A curious instance of the acquisition and rejection of fortune reaches
us from New Orleans. A stableman named Pathier, belonging to an hotel
in that city, suddenly found himself heir to eighty thousand francs
at the death of his mother; yet strange to say refused to accept the
money. The law has in vain endeavoured to induce him to avail himself
of the windfall: his only ambition is to smoke his pipe and groom the
horses. To such an instance of contempt of riches it would be difficult
to find a parallel.
Some curious facts from the world of Nature crop up occasionally, which
are well worthy of consideration. For instance, it has been proved
that the bee may under certain circumstances turn out to be anything
but the pattern of industry it is proverbially supposed to furnish.
Australian colonists have from time to time taken out swarms of bees
to their adopted land, in the hope of deriving practical benefit from
the profusion of flowers with which the whole country abounds. For
some little time the newly imported bees maintained their reputation
for industry, storing up their food in the comfortable hives provided
for them, and supplying the colonists with far superior honey to
that collected by the indigenous honey-producers the ‘mellipones.’
Presently, however, the hives were discovered unstocked at the end of
the autumn, notwithstanding the long summers of the northern parts
of Australia, and it was found that the bees entirely neglected to
lay by a stock of food, as was their wont. Though the bees increased
and the hives were always regularly tenanted, no honey was brought
home. It soon became evident that, finding the perennial summer of the
tropical parts of Australia afforded them abundance of food, without
the intervention of long winters, the bees forsook their old habits,
gave themselves up to a life of happy indolence, and no longer took the
trouble to convey their superabundant supplies to the hives prepared
for them. In short, there being no winters to provide for, the bees
gave up the practice of storing honey.
Tenacity of life in eels and cats is proverbial; but from an instance
that occurred at Flinstow Farm, near Pembroke, it appears that the pig
may claim to rank with other creatures in this respect. For sixteen
days a pig was missed from the farmyard, and as every search failed to
discover it, the conclusion was arrived at that it had been stolen.
Some masons who were repairing a brick kiln on the farm one day
discovered the missing animal, which had fallen into the kiln, and was
unable to extricate itself. Though all that time without food, the pig
when rescued was able to eat, and did not seem much the worse for its
long imprisonment.
An unexpected friend to man has been discovered in a kind of animalcule
engendered by sewage, which prevents the decomposing matter from
becoming a dangerous nuisance. Mr Angell, the public analyst for
Hampshire, having examined the sewage-polluted fluid in Southampton
Water, has discovered that where the suspended matters are thickest
there is going on a silent destruction of the foul matters, through
the agency of millions of the minute creatures, by some held to be
of animal, but by Mr Angell believed to be of vegetable origin. On
examining the muddy fluid through a microscope, it was found to contain
myriads of little brown organisms, surrounded with a gelatinous
substance. Each specimen was found to be active in its movements and
of peculiar shape, being furnished with a belt of cilia round the
centre of the body, and with a long transparent and very flexible tail.
After death, these tiny atoms give off an odour similar to that of
sea-weed, and change to a green colour. During life they evolve bubbles
of oxygen gas, which serve to purify the water from the effects of
the decomposing matter on which they themselves feed. It is a pity,
however, that man, by polluting rivers with sewage, should stand so
much in need of this self-developed scavenger.
Canada, we are told, claims to have produced the largest cheese on
record. It weighed seven thousand pounds, was six feet ten inches in
diameter, three feet in height, and twenty-one feet in circumference;
requiring one milking of seven thousand cows, or thirty-five tuns
of milk to produce it.—Of numerical curious facts, it may not be
uninteresting to state that no less than sixteen different shades of
green are understood to be patronised by the fashionable world; and
that fifteen persons may dine together a billion times without sitting
twice in the same relative position, by merely changing a chair at each
dinner. So much for the combination of numbers.
A CURIOUS ANTIQUARIAN HOAX.
Every one has doubtless read _The Antiquary_, and enjoyed the skill
with which the keenest archæologist of the literary fraternity raised a
laugh against his own favourite studies. The Kaim of Kinprunes and the
‘A.D.L.L.’ furnish the standard jest with which the Oldbucks of every
future age will be assailed, and the bodle that he ‘thocht was an auld
coin’ helps in the attack. Scotland being thus the scene of the most
famous fictional story of this kind, it is curious to find it also the
home of one of the best authenticated antiquarian hoaxes known to have
been practised.
The story which we are about to narrate dates back to the reign of
George the Third; and though now sixty years since, one of the parties
to the hoax then perpetrated has just made the details of the story
public in a letter read before the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
at an early meeting in the present year. The circumstances which led
to the hoax being perpetrated were that, when the ruins of the eastern
portion or choir of the old Abbey Church of Dunfermline were to be
removed for the erection of what forms now the parish church, great
anxiety was manifested to prove the truth of the statement, which,
although found in the records, was to some extent believed to be
doubtful, that Bruce the patriot king of Scotland was interred there.
It may suffice for the purposes of the present sketch to state that the
evidence that King Robert Bruce was really buried here is stated by the
Rev. Peter Chalmers, in his _History of Dunfermline_, to be ‘clear,
varied, and strong.’ Bruce died at Cardross in Dumbartonshire in 1329;
and although he had confided to his faithful follower Sir James Douglas
the task of conveying his heart to the Holy Land, Dunfermline was
chosen by himself as his place of sepulture. Mr Chalmers quotes various
entries in the Chartulary of Dunfermline in support of this; while in
Barbour’s famous poem the king is spoken of as having been laid
In a fayr tumb, intill the quer.
In Fordun’s _Scotichronicon_ mention is also made of Bruce being
interred ‘in the middle of the choir’ of the Abbey Church.
When the excavations were being made in 1818 for the erection of the
new church, the operations were watched by many with great interest;
and the Barons of Exchequer in Scotland, in whose custody were the
royal palaces, &c., took some pains to secure that the remains of the
king, if found, should be properly treated. Fulfilling completely the
expectations entertained, a body incased in lead was found by the
excavators, occupying exactly the place which the king’s remains would
be expected to do. It was inwrapped in a double casing of lead; and
some fragments of gold-embroidered linen cloth were also found, shewing
that here at least was the tomb of no common person. The skeleton was
that of a kingly man, six feet in height, with a splendid head, and
in every way worthy of Scotland’s hero. And when the body came to be
examined, previous to its reinterment, it was found that the _sternum_
or breast-bone had been sawn through longitudinally from top to bottom,
this being the method adopted by the anatomists of the fourteenth
century to reach the heart, for separate interment. This fact and the
position of the body seemed to render it all but certain that the
remains were those of Bruce; but still there remained a _possibility_
of mistake.
It was at this point the hoax was perpetrated of which we now proceed
to speak. On the exhumation of the body, it was at once returned to
the earth, and the place where it was found was closed in, flat stones
being placed over the aperture. The discovery was reported to the
Barons of Exchequer, and excited great interest in the minds of all
Scottish people of patriotic or antiquarian feelings. Considerable
delay, however, was made in determining what should be done; and it
was not till November 1819 that, with much ceremony, the skeleton
was recoffined and reinterred. The tomb was filled up with pitch,
carefully built over and inclosed, and an elaborate Latin epitaph was
prepared to the effect that the interesting discovery had been made
amongst the ruins of the old church, &c. But as we have said, there
was a possibility of mistake; and it entered into the heads of two
young men that it would be a capital thing to convince the good folk
of Dunfermline that their town really did contain the body of the
king. One of these was the younger brother of the architect engaged in
the new church, and the other an artist comrade. Their design was to
get an old or old-looking bronze plate, and after inscribing suitable
characters upon it, to find some means of getting it put into the
partially opened grave, so that it would be discovered on proceeding
with the work. Assisted by the gentleman who now tells the story, a
plate was accordingly prepared bearing a device.
When the discovery of the plate was made, its existence jumped so
completely with the public wish, that it was hailed with unquestioning
and extravagant joy. So much delight was manifested and so seriously
was the jest taken, that the perpetrators of it were afraid to confess
what they had done.
A ludicrous incident occurred at the time. The provost of Dunfermline,
a banker, sent for the artist, who joyfully waited on the chief
magistrate, anticipating employment. This it was indeed, but of
unexpected and unwelcome kind, for it was to make a drawing of his own
plate, for the Transactions of one of the learned societies! His heart
sunk, and his hand was tremulous; and he suggested to the provost that
he could make the drawing better if allowed to take the plate home. The
answer was startling. Amazed at the audacity of the request, the banker
said: ‘I have more money in the bank just now than ever I had before;
but I would rather give you the whole of it than let that plate out of
my custody for an hour, until its destination is decided by the highest
authorities.’ So the young artist had to sit down and make the drawing,
afraid to hint at the ‘solemn mockery’ in which he was engaged. After a
time suspicion fell on the plate, and it was generally believed to be a
fabrication, although the details of the story were not known till now.
The Rev. Mr Chalmers, whose work was published more than forty years
ago, speaks of the plate as having been ‘satisfactorily ascertained
not to be ancient.’ In Black’s _Guide to Scotland_, it is stated that
the plate—of the _bona fides_ of which no doubt is expressed—may be
seen in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries at Edinburgh. But the
estimation in which this relic (which would have been priceless if
genuine) was held by the Society may be judged from the statement made
by the Secretary at the meeting where the above story was made public,
that he had had to search for the plate in the cellar in order to
exhibit it to the Fellows.
The narrator of the story of which the above is an outline is Mr
John Nimmo, whose name is associated with two journals of widely
different repute. A printer by trade, he left Edinburgh for Paris in
the year 1821, and was for many years one of the principal employés
on _Galignani_. He is now enjoying well-earned repose after a lengthy
life of labour. The cause of Mr Nimmo’s leaving Scotland recalls the
history of a painful event, he having been the printer of the _Beacon_,
a newspaper which gained unenviable notoriety by its virulent personal
attacks on men obnoxious to the government of the day. The newspaper
is memorable in the local history of Scotland from the tragic event in
which Mr Stewart of Dunearn was engaged. Mr Stewart had endeavoured in
vain to ascertain by whom the articles were written, and when the name
of Mr Nimmo was given, he refused to accept him as responsible. After a
while the _Beacon_ was given up, and a successor of the same character
was started in Glasgow. Mr Stewart discovered that some of the articles
in the latter were in the handwriting of Sir Alexander Boswell, the
eldest son of Johnson’s biographer. He challenged Sir Alexander; and in
the duel which ensued the latter was mortally wounded; and Mr Stewart,
who was subsequently tried for the offence, was acquitted. The fact
that Mr Nimmo did not return to Scotland for many years after the
perpetration of the hoax in which he was concerned, and that then he
found the question, if not forgotten, certainly exciting no interest,
may explain why he has only now made public, in a letter to an old
friend in Edinburgh, the above curious story.
VILLAGE VETERANS.
We are somewhat proud of the number of hale old people in our village,
the salubrity of which outsiders are apt to question, on account of
its proximity to the Fens. No doubt ague is still known amongst us
in some degree; but the intending visitor who for that reason equips
himself with stores of quinine, evinces just such an exaggerated dread
as that which inspired Dr Johnson to provide himself with pistols on
his memorable journey to the Highlands. Our death-rate is quite within
the average, and longevity is one of our strong points. We must admit
of course that many of our veterans are placed rather early on the list
by rheumatism or asthma; but it is astonishing how long they contrive
to continue there in spite of coughs and stiff joints. We keep a mental
register of them one and all, know each of them personally, and take a
lively interest in their condition, as becomes a parish doctor. There
is an additional zest to our observations in the marked individualities
amongst them, which a protracted village life has always a tendency
to produce; but over and above local and professional pride in their
length of years and the pleasure which mere character-study yields,
there are certain general and loftier human grounds on which we might
excuse a few remarks regarding our village veterans.
One sunny spot hard by the southern wall of the old bridge forms the
favourite haunt of the old men in fine weather. There they muster in
strength on the balmy summer mornings, and there the hardier of them
forgather whenever there is a blink of sunshine.
Most of them walk by the aid of two sticks, the halest amongst them
requiring the assistance of at least one, and on these they lean as
they rest their backs against the warm red-brick wall. It is curious to
note the heartiness of their morning greetings, and the ‘I’m bravely,
thank ye,’ with which an octogenarian doubled up with suffering will
answer the challenge as to his health. Their next task is to compare
notes as to the past night’s experience, this mutual review of coughs
and other specific ailments being often couched in phrases more quaint
than elegant; as when dear old Jemmy Baxter said to his listeners
the other day: ‘Dash my wig, if I didn’t think I wor agoin’ to die.’
Then follows much babbling of olden times, of strange things which
happened when they were hale and hearty, of the sacks of corn they
could carry, of the acres they could reap, of the hard work and big
pay they had when the great drains were making, and not unseldom of
the merry-makings and junketings of half a century ago. Or they talk
with a keenness of interest, sadly suggestive, of the event of the
day, be it the arrival of a new steam-plough or the latest twin-birth
in the parish. Sometimes a scrap of news from the great world without,
falls among them—a great shipwreck, a fresh battle, or a general
election—and sets them agog with wonder and curiosity.
Old age, like most other inevitable things, is a great leveller, and
our group sometimes consists of individuals who have held very various
positions in life. The chief spokesman and referee in all matters of
gossip is an old man-of-war sailor. He has many a tale to tell of
’board ship, but is best known as the village Zadkiel; a title given,
we fancy, in derision rather than flattery. He has been every inch
a seaman, and is even yet a good type of an old salt, in spite of
rheumatism and crutches. The other veterans have for the most part
been farm-labourers; some have been mechanics; several innkeepers
and tradesmen; and one or two have been farmers in a small way. All
now meet, however, on the common ground of age and infirmity. Old
Dalboys, at one time the hectoring farmer of Longley, smokes the pipe
of equality with Tommy Hill, whom for thirty years he had bullied
as his horse-tender; while the superannuated schoolmaster gossips
amicably with his ancient enemy the now retired sexton. They have
buried old grudges, feuds, and animosities under that wall with the
sunny southern exposure, as thoroughly as they must in any case do
ere long under the chill walls of the old churchyard. No doubt they
have their little childish jealousies still, but these are of a fresh
growth. Sam Payne and Bill Shipley are both fond of the easy position
afforded by the obtuse angle of a bend in the wall, and grumble a
little when the other contrives to secure it. Occasionally John Shore,
in the pride of his practical knowledge, will make a stir in the camp
by doggedly disputing such a statement as that London lies north-east
of Cambridge. At times, too, Billie Wright, who we fear is the butt of
these veteran schoolboys, will totter off in dudgeon, because, being
no smoker himself, some of the more vivacious of his mates get on the
weather-side of him with their pipes. But these tiffs are harmless and
ephemeral, and one can well afford to smile at and forget them in view
of the genuine friendship and good-will that prevail.