_Loyalty to Prince, Disloyalty to Self_
A case of disinterested generosity and moral delinquency without a
parallel is that recorded of a Scotch peasant, who sheltered the
Pretender, Prince Charles Edward, after his defeat at Culloden Moor, in
1746, when the price of thirty thousand pounds was set upon his head,
and who was afterwards hung for stealing a cow!
_Singular Expedient_
A strange story is that related in a paper on “English and Irish
Juries,” in _All the Year Round_. The presiding judge in the case, Sir
James Dyce, chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas, astonished at
the verdict of acquittal in so plain a case, sought an interview with
the foreman, who, having previously obtained a promise of secrecy during
his lifetime, confessed that he had killed the man in a struggle in
self-defence, and said that he had caused himself to be placed on the
jury in order to insure his acquittal.
_Queer Parliamentary Enactment_
When the bill was in Parliament for building the famous bridge at
Gloucester, there was a clause enacting that the commissioners should
meet on the _first Monday_ in every month, “except the same should fall
on Christmas day, Ash Wednesday, or Good Friday.” The blunder as to the
last two is palpable, and a moment’s reflection would show that
Christmas Day can never fall on the first Monday of the month. The
mistake passed unobserved, and still stands in the Act.
_Bolingbroke’s Favorite Desk_
Among the satirical prints brought out in connection with the famous
Treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, was a picture in which was represented what
was said to be a very remarkable incident in the life of Lord
Bolingbroke. In this picture he is seen sitting up in bed in a sort of
dressing-gown. Leaning over the bed is a female as scantily attired as a
Venus, and upon that part of her figure from which the Venus Callipyge
took her name, Bolingbroke is signing a paper. This incident furnishes a
strange picture of the manners of the times and of the recklessness of
Bolingbroke.
_Fourth of March_
Several years ago an English journal, _The Owl_, published the following
singular paragraph:
“It is not perhaps generally known to our readers that the reason which
the founders of the American republic had for selecting the fourth of
March for the inauguration of their President, was to avoid the
occurrence of a _dies non_ by the incidence of that date on a Sunday. By
calculation it was ascertained that for many hundreds of years the
quadrennial recurrence of that day in the year of election invariably
falls on a week day.”
In the face of this absurdly incorrect statement, and before it was
written, the fourth of March fell twice on Sunday,—in 1821 and in
1849,—so that Monroe’s second inauguration and General Taylor’s
inauguration each took place on Monday, March 5.
_The Powwow_
The mysterious performance known as the powwow among the North American
aborigines dates back to time immemorial. David Brainerd says, in his
Indian Narrative, “At a distance, with my Bible in my hand, I was
resolved if possible to spoil their spirit of powwowing, and prevent
their receiving an answer from the infernal world.” Elsewhere, speaking
of the Delaware Indians and their medicine men, he says, “They are much
awed by those among themselves who are called powwowers, who are
supposed to have a power of enchanting or poisoning them to death.” The
Esquimaux also have a sorcerer or diviner who conjures over the sick.
Dr. Kane, in his “Arctic Explorations,” says of this Angekok, as he is
called, that “he is the general counsellor who prescribes or powwows in
sickness and over wounds, directs the policy of the little state, and is
really the power behind the throne.”
_The Flowering Dogwood_
A correspondent wrote to the New York _Sun_ urging the claims of the
dogwood flower (_Cornus florida_) to be chosen as the national flower,
and in support of the claims told the following story:
“A British army was marching upon Washington’s camp, expecting to find
him with a small force. In the distance, about where they expected to
find the camp, the British scouts saw a hill covered with dogwood trees
in blossom. They mistook the trees for tents, and returned with the
report that Washington’s army was so large that its tents whitened the
hills. The British were not prepared to meet a large army, and so
retired, leaving Washington and his little army in peace.”
_Offensiveness Punished_
The following story of the Paris Commune was vouched for by an English
spectator: “As several Versaillese were being led away to be shot, one
man in the crowd that accompanied them to see the shooting made himself
conspicuous by taunting and reviling the prisoners. ‘There, confound
you,’ said one of the prisoners at last, ‘don’t you try to get out of it
by edging off into the crowd and pretending you are one of them. Come
back here; the game is up; let us all die together;’ and the crowd was
so persuaded that the communard’s vehemence was only assumed to cloak
his escape that he was marched into file with the prisoners and duly
shot.”
_Ropes made of Women’s Hair_
Speaking before a meeting of the Methodist ministers, Bishop Fowler told
of a new heathen temple in the northern part of Japan. It was of
enormous size, and the timbers for the temple from their mountain homes
were hauled up to the temple and put in place by ropes made from the
hair of the women of the province. An edict went forth calling for the
long hair of the women of the province, and two ropes were made from
these tresses—one seventeen inches in circumference and fourteen hundred
feet long, and the other ten to eleven inches around and two thousand
six hundred feet long.
_Premonitory Caution_
We find it written of Simonides
That travelling in strange countries once he found
A corpse that lay expiring on the ground,
For which, with pain, he caused due obsequies
To be performed, and paid all holy fees.
Soon after, this man’s Ghost unto him came
And told him not to sail, as was his aim,
On board a ship then ready for the seas.
Simonides, admonished by the Ghost,
Remained behind; the ship the following day
Set sail, was wrecked, and all on board was lost.
Thus was the tenderest Poet that could be,
Who sang in ancient Greece his loving lay,
Saved out of many by his piety.
_Realism_
“To paint cuirassiers,” said Meissonier, “I must needs see them.” He
accordingly took a dozen of this corps to his country home, where they
were required to charge down the park every morning, but the evolution
did not last long, and, before the artist had sketched an outline of the
group, the gallant fellows were out of sight. “You must follow them by
train,” said a friend. No sooner said than done. An engineer was
summoned, rails were laid down, rolling stock purchased, and for several
weeks Meissonier accompanied the charge of his models by train. But it
was summer, and historical accuracy required that the cuirassiers should
dash over snowy ground. Thousands of bushels of flour were then laid
down in the park, and the cuirassiers as they charged became enveloped
in clouds of farina. The illusion was complete, the studies admirable,
and the finished picture sold.
_He couldn’t have shot him_
Mr. William Hemphill Jones, formerly Deputy Comptroller of the Treasury,
was the man to whom General Dix telegraphed, “If any one attempts to
haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot.” The order was
grand, but it becomes almost ridiculous when you see the amiable
gentleman to whom it was sent, and imagine him receiving it alone and
unarmed, as a treasury clerk sent to New Orleans on public business, and
surrounded by an infuriated mob. Never was a man more powerless to obey
an order.
_Cromwell’s Grace_
Oliver Cromwell usually said the following grace before meals: “Some
people have food, but no appetite; others have an appetite, but no food.
I have both. The Lord be praised!” or words to this effect.
Burns’s version, which he calls the Selkirk grace, is as follows:
“Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.”
_The Ocean Depths_
The greatest depths known of the sea is in the South Atlantic Ocean,
midway between the island of Tristan d’Acunha and the mouth of the Rio
de la Plata. The bottom was there reached at a depth of 40,236 feet, or
eight and three-quarter miles, exceeding by more than 17,000 feet the
height of Mount Everest, the loftiest mountain in the world. In the
North Atlantic Ocean, south of Newfoundland, soundings have been made to
a depth of 4580 fathoms, or 27,480 feet, while depths equalling 34,000
feet, or six and a half miles, are reported south of the Bermuda
Islands. The average depth of the Pacific Ocean between Japan and
California is a little over 2000 fathoms; between Chili and the Sandwich
Islands, 2500 fathoms; and between Chili and New Zealand, 1500 fathoms.
The average depth of all the oceans is from 2000 to 2500 fathoms.
_Pleasant Reading_
The late Abraham Hayward, distinguished in his time as a man of letters,
was instrumental in making public the fact that Lord Beaconsfield, in
his speech on the Duke of Wellington’s death, had cribbed from M. Thiers
a considerable part of his eulogium. On the night when this discovery
was first unfolded, in the London _Globe_, Mrs. Disraeli, unconscious of
the coming storm, went out to a party, and, entering the room, announced
in loud tones, proud of her lord’s new honor, “I left the Chancellor of
the Exchequer reading the evening paper.” “Oh, what delightful reading
he will find in it!” responded a malicious Whig peer.
_Bismarck in the Language of the Spirits_
On the eve of the Franco-German War, Napoleon III., as superstitious a
man as his uncle, was present at a table-turning seance at the
Tuileries, when a courtier, expecting doubtless some fulsome bit of
flattery from the oracle, asked the question, “Who is to be the victor
in this war?”
Two sharp raps were the immediate answer, but no one present could
interpret them in accordance with the usual code of signs. A second time
the inquiry was made and received the same distinct reply, to the
emperor’s evident displeasure.
At last when a third trial had brought the same persistent result, he
could stand the experiment no longer, and, with an irritated “What can a
double rap signify but _bis-mark_?” he left the room.
_The Age of Niagara Falls_
The last word on this much-discussed subject, which is of great geologic
importance, because the falls have been made to serve as a sort of
standard by which all geologic time is measured, comes from J. W.
Spencer, who concludes from the measured rate of recession during
forty-eight years, together with other geologic data not usually taken
into account, that the falls are thirty-one thousand years old, and the
river thirty-two thousand; also that the Huron drainage was turned into
Lake Erie less than eight thousand years ago. He thinks that the lake
epoch began fifty thousand or sixty thousand years ago, and that the
falls have about five thousand years more to live, at the end of which
time the lake waters will discharge into the Mississippi.
_Tools of the Pyramid Builders_
Mr. Petrie’s researches at Gizeh show that the Egyptian stone-workers,
four thousand years ago, had a surprising acquaintance with what have
been considered modern tools. Among the many tools used by the
pyramid-builders were both solid and tubular drills and straight and
circular saws. The drills, like those of the present time, were set with
jewels (probably corundum, as the diamond was very scarce), and even
lathe-tools had such cutting edges. So remarkable was the quality of the
tubular drills and the skill of the workmen that the cutting marks in
hard granite give no indication of wear of the tool, while a cut of a
tenth of an inch was made in the hardest rock at each revolution, and a
hole through both the hardest and softest material was bored perfectly
smooth and uniform throughout.
_A Distant World_
It is impossible for the finite mind to comprehend the vastness of the
spaces that separate us from the stars, even from those that are
nearest. Some idea of our marvellous distance from Sirius, the nearest
fixed star, and which shines brightest in the heavens, is given by this
illustration. A scientific writer says that if people on the star Sirius
have telescopes powerful enough to distinguish objects on our planet,
and are looking at it now, they are witnessing the destruction of
Jerusalem, which took place more than eighteen hundred years ago. The
reason of this is that the light which the world reflects, travelling as
it does at the rate of one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per
second, would take over eighteen centuries to reach the nearest fixed
star.
_A Matter of Form_
The following is a brief extract from a law paper, for the full
understanding of which it has to be kept in view that the pleader, being
an officer of the law, who has been prevented from executing his warrant
by threats, is required, as a matter of form, to swear that he was
really afraid that the threat would be carried into execution:
“Farther depones, that the said A. B. said that if deponent did not
immediately take himself off he would pitch him (the deponent) down
stairs,—which the deponent verily believes he would have done.
“Farther depones, that, time and place aforesaid, the said A. B. said to
deponent, ‘If you come another step nearer, I’ll kick you to
hell,’—which the deponent verily believes he would have done.”
_Sweet Auburn_
Thousands of American tourists, while in London, stand reverentially
beside the grave of Oliver Goldsmith in the old burial ground of the
Temple, or curiously examine the room in Wine Office Court in which he
wrote the “Vicar of Wakefield.” But how many of all these thousands have
ever visited the _locale_ of the “Deserted Village?” Lissoy, the Auburn
of the poet, is on the road that runs from Athlone to Ballymahon, not
more than fifty or sixty miles west of Dublin, yet there is nothing in
Westmeath to attract strangers. The general impression is that when the
“one only master,” General Napier, grasped the whole domain, and
dispossessed and removed the _cottiers_ to make room for his projected
improvements, the village was dismantled and effaced. It is said,
however, that a descendant of General Napier afterwards did something in
the way of restoration. Be this as it may, the ruined walls of the
alehouse, the “busy mill,” and the “decent church” on the hill are still
standing.
_Importance of Punctuation_
The dowager Czarina is a great favorite in Russia. Among other stories
illustrating her character is this: She saw on her husband’s table a
document regarding a political prisoner. On the margin Alexander III.
had written, “Pardon impossible; to be sent to Siberia.” The Czarina
took up the pen and, striking out the semicolon after “impossible,” put
it before the word. Then the indorsement read, “Pardon; impossible to be
sent to Siberia.” The Czar let it stand.
_Bottled Tears_
In Persia the past and the present are linked by the belief that human
tears are a remedy for certain chronic diseases. At every funeral the
bottling of mourners’ tears forms a prominent feature of the ceremonies.
Every mourner is presented with a sponge with which to mop off the
cheeks and eyes, and after the burial the moistened sponges are
presented to the priest who squeezes the tears into bottles which he
keeps for curative purposes. This is one of the most ancient of the
Eastern customs; it is referred to in the eighth verse of the
fifty-sixth Psalm, where David says, “put thou my tears into thy
bottle;” and according to the testimony of a physician recently returned
from a visit to Persia, the custom is still practised by the Persians as
it was thousands of years ago.
_As you read it_
It is said that a professed atheist once had a motto on one of his walls
bearing the words “God is Nowhere.” His little daughter, just beginning
to read, came into the room and began to spell, “G-o-d God, I-s Is,
N-o-w Now, H-e-r-e Here—God is now here.” The father was at once aroused
and excited. We do not ask which was right, but notice that the meaning
depends on how you read, and the possible meanings are as opposite as
the poles.
_A Story of Witchcraft_
When Lord Chief Justice Holt presided in the Court of King’s Bench
(1690), a poor decrepit old woman was brought before him charged with
witchcraft. “What is the proof?” asked his lordship. “She has a powerful
spell,” answered the prosecutor. “Let me see it.” The “spell” was handed
up to the bench. It proved to be a small ball of variously colored rags
of silk, bound with threads of as many different hues. These were
unwound and unfolded, until there was revealed a scrap of parchment, on
which were written certain characters now nearly illegible from constant
use. “Is this the spell?” asked the judge. The prosecutor replied that
it was. After attentive scrutiny of the charm, the judge, turning to the
old creature, said, “Prisoner, how came you by this?” “A young
gentleman, my lord, gave it to me to cure my child’s ague.” “How long
since?” “Thirty years, my lord.” “And did it cure the child?” “Oh, yes,
sir; and many others.” “I am glad of it.” The judge paused a few
moments, and then addressed the jury as follows: “Gentlemen of the jury,
thirty years ago, I and some companions, as thoughtless as myself, went
to this woman’s place, then a public house, and, after enjoying
ourselves, found we had no means to discharge the reckoning. I had
recourse to a stratagem. Observing a child ill of an ague, I pretended I
had a spell to cure her. I wrote the classic line you see on that scrap
of parchment, and was discharged of the demand on me by the gratitude of
the poor woman before us for the supposed benefit.”
_Circumstantial Evidence_
At a table-d’hôte at Ludwigsburg one of the company showed a very rare
gold coin, which was passed around for inspection. After conjectures as
to its origin and value, conversation drifted to other subjects, and the
coin was temporarily forgotten. After awhile, the owner asked for it,
and to the surprise of all, it was not to be found. A gentleman sitting
at the foot of the table was observed to be in much agitation, and as
his embarrassment seemed to increase with the continuance of the search
the company was about to propose a very disagreeable measure, when
suddenly a waiter entered the room, saying, “Here is the coin; it was
found in one of the finger-glasses.” The relief to all was manifest, and
now the suspected stranger broke his silence thus: “None of you can
rejoice more than myself at the recovery of the coin, for I have been
placed in a painful situation. By a singular coincidence I have a
duplicate of the very same coin in my purse (here showing it to the
company). The idea that on the personal search which would probably be
proposed I would be taken for the purloiner of the coin, added to the
fact that I am a stranger here, with no one to vouch for my integrity,
was distracting. The honesty of the servants, with a lucky accident, has
saved my honor.” The friendly congratulations of the company soon
effaced the unpleasant effect of their unwarranted suspicions.
_A Little Beggar’s Charity_
A touching little begging story with a good moral is told by the
Pittsburg _Telegraph_. A young man who had been on a three days’ debauch
wandered into the office room of a hotel, where he was well known, sat
down, and stared moodily into the street. Presently a little girl of
about ten years came in and looked timidly about the room. She was
dressed in rags, but she had a sweet, intelligent face that could
scarcely fail to excite sympathy. There were five persons in the room,
and she went to each begging. One gentleman gave her a five-cent piece,
and she then went to the gentleman spoken of and asked him for a penny,
adding: “I haven’t had anything to eat for a whole day.” The gentleman
was out of humor, and he said, crossly: “Don’t bother me; go away! I
haven’t had anything to eat for three days.” The child opened her eyes
in shy wonder and stared at him a moment, and then walked slowly towards
the door. She turned the knob, and then after hesitating a few seconds,
walked up to him, and gently laying the five cents she had received on
his knee, said with a tone of true girlish pity in her voice, “If you
haven’t had anything to eat for three days, you take this and go and buy
some bread. Perhaps I can get some more somewhere.” The young fellow
blushed to the roots of his hair, and lifted the Sister of Charity in
his arms, kissed her two or three times in delight. Then he took her to
the persons in the room, and to those in the corridors and in the
office, and told the story and asked contributions, giving himself all
the money he had with him. He succeeded in raising over forty dollars
and sent the little one on her way rejoicing.
_Jack Sprat_
Enthusiasts in folk-lore have undertaken to prove that subtle allegories
or abstruse theological dogmas are the basis of popular tales. That in
the celebrated story of Jack Sprat, for example, it is possible to
discern an emblem of a rapacious clergy and an equally greedy
aristocracy devouring the substance of the commons.
_Franklin’s Brown Coat_
When Benjamin Franklin, as minister to France, was formally presented to
Louis XVI., he gained admiration for republican simplicity by appearing
in a plain, ordinary suit. But when Nathaniel Hawthorne made the
discovery that Franklin’s tailor had disappointed him of the
gold-embroidered court costume he had ordered, simple-minded republicans
were considerably disconcerted.
_Sources of History_
Early in the sixteenth century four Franciscan monks, living in a
monastery in Donegal, compiled from a tangled web of tradition, song,
story, and legend, the annals upon which all subsequent _histories_ of
Ireland have been based.
_A Long Name_
Probably the longest name in the world is attached to the daughter of
Arthur Pepper, laundryman. The name of his daughter, born 1883, is Anna
Bertha Cecilia Diana Emily Fanny Gertrude Hypatia Inez Jane Kate Louisa
Maud Nora Ophelia Quince Rebecca Sarah Teresa Ulysses Venus Winifred
Xenophon Yetty Zeus Pepper, one title for every letter of the alphabet.
_Hero Worship_
Among the Acul Mountains, in Hayti, there has been found, in an old
house, a bust of Lord Nelson. It is of white marble, somewhat stained by
time and neglect. Nelson is represented in his costume of admiral, and
bears on his breast five decorations. One, in commemoration of the
battle of Aboukir, has the inscription, “Rear Admiral Lord Nelson of the
Nile.” Another medal bears the words, “Almighty God has blessed his
Majesty’s glory!”
This bust, interesting in its artistic and historical association, was
found on an altar devoted to the _fetish_ worship, where for half a
century it has been reverenced as the Deity of the Mountain Streams. The
names of the sculptors were Coale and Lealy, of Lambeth.
Thus for fifty years a bust of an English admiral has been worshipped as
a heathen idol.
_Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?_
During the contest over the will of Samuel J. Tilden, himself an eminent
lawyer, it was noted, among some of the failures of great lawyers to
draw wills that will be indisputable, that Baron St. Leonards, Lord High
Chancellor of England, who was the author of treatises on the law of
property, to-day accepted as authorities, wrote a will which was
overthrown by the courts. Intending testators may well wonder wherein
safety and certainty for testamentary bequests may be found.
_None Such_
The stone in the Washington Monument contributed by the government of
Switzerland bears this inscription: “This block is from the original
chapel built to William Tell, in 1338, on Lake Lucerne, Switzerland, at
the spot where he escaped from Gessler.” Since it was sent here the
Historical Society of Switzerland has demonstrated that no such persons
as Tell and Gessler ever existed.
_The Ants’ Habits_
Among the many mistakes prevalent in regard to the habits of animals and
insects is the notion that ants in general gather food in harvest for a
winter’s store. This is quite an error; in the first place, they do not
live on grain, but chiefly on animal food; and in the next place, they
are torpid in winter and do not require food. There is in Poonah a
grain-feeding species which stores up millet seed, but certainly our
ants have no claim to Jane Taylor’s stanza,—
“Who taught the little ant the way
Its narrow hole to bore,
And labor all the summer day
To gather winter store?”
_Caroline Herschel’s many Years_
The life of Caroline Herschel, one would imagine, was anything but
favorable to long-lasting. Insufficient sleep, irregular and hasty
meals, long fasts, excessive toil, both bodily and mental, were the
conditions of her life—at least, during the fifteen years she was her
brother’s housekeeper and astronomical assistant. A lady who devoted
herself to hard work, one of the necessities of which was that she had
to spend the whole of every starry night, covered with dew or hoar
frost, on a grass-plot in the garden, would not, one would think, be
likely to make old bones. At the age of eighty-two, however, according
to her nephew’s account, she skipped up two flights of stairs and ran
about like a girl of twenty. She died at the age of ninety-eight.
_Constitution of the Early Church_
Dean Stanley once remarked that the most learned of all the living
bishops of England (Dr. Lightfoot) has, with his characteristic
moderation and erudition, proved beyond dispute, in a celebrated essay
attached to his edition of “St. Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians,” that
the early council of the Apostolic churches of the first century was not
that of a single bishop, but of a body of pastors indifferently styled
bishops or presbyters, and that it was not till the very end of the
apostolic age that the office which we now call Episcopacy gradually and
surely made its way into the churches of Asia Minor; that Presbytery was
not a later growth out of Episcopacy, but that Episcopacy was a later
growth out of Presbytery; that the office which the apostles instituted
was a kind of rule, not of bishops, but of presbyters; and that even
down to the third century presbyters as well as bishops possessed the
power of nominating and consecrating bishops.
“_Home, Sweet Home_”
“Clari; or, The Maid of Milan,” produced in 1823, contains one piece
that is known in every English-speaking country,—“Home, sweet home.”
Clari is a beautiful peasant girl, who has exchanged her father’s lowly
cottage for the splendor of the duke’s palace and become his bride. But
she pines for the simple life she has led, and as she enters, fatigued
and melancholy, she sings this song. The words are by John Howard Payne,
an American, and though the music was called by Bishop a “Sicilian air,”
it is now generally agreed that it was really composed by him. “It is
the song,” says Clari, “of my native village,—the hymn of the lowly
heart, which dwells upon every lip there, and like a spell-word brings
back to its home the affection which e’er has been betrayed to wander
from it. It is the first music heard by infancy in its cradle; and our
cottagers, blending it with all their earliest and tenderest
recollections, never cease to feel its magic till they cease to live.”
The air is heard again during the play; a chorus of villagers sing it
when Clari revisits her home.
About a year before Payne’s death at Tunis, where he was serving as
American Consul, he wrote the following letter:
WASHINGTON, March 3, 1851.
MY DEAR SIR,—It affords me great pleasure to comply with your request
for the words of “Home, Sweet Home.” Surely there is something strange
in the fact that it should have been my lot to cause so many people in
the world to boast of the delights of home, when I never had a home of
my own, and never expect to have one, now—especially since those here at
Washington who possess the power seem so reluctant to allow me the means
of earning one! In the hope that I may again and often have the
gratification of meeting you, believe me, my dear sir,
Yours, most faithfully,
JOHN HOWARD PAYNE.