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About The Eugene City guard. (Eugene City, Or.) 1870-1899 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 4, 1880)
India Fairy Tales. Mr. Ralston, in Lis interesting intro duction to Miss Stokes' admirable selec tion of Indian Fairy Tales, mentions ' some of the characteristic resemblances and some of the characteristic differ ences between the Indian and Western fairy tales, but he appears to be think ing rather of the structure and charac ter of the tales themselves, in what he writes, than of the relation of the tales to the character of the people among whom they are curront. The tales, however, are very interesting from the latter point of view also. As the repre sentations of a people's fancy, of the people's ideals of evil and good fort une and the people's character, they are, to our mind, even more interesting than they are merely as tales, and it seems to us worth while to pick out some of the points in which these characteristics differ from, those simi larly embodied in the traditions of the Western poople. And in the first place, these Indian fairy talos seem the stories less of children than of men and women; or, if of children, of children who are men and women on a small scale. They are very apt to originate in some deeds almost unnatural, not merely the freaks of evil spirits or evu mines, tor that is common enough also in the Western fairy stories, but in unnatural deeds of men aud women resulting from such freaks. Thus, in some of these stories the starving mothers kill and eat their own children, and hardly suffer for it, except negatively, by not iiavmg the son to rely upon in whom the mother who . rejects the horrid food lives to take so much joy and pride. Again, the mar velous child who is to set everything to rights is not a child, as he would be in the Western tales, with a child's depend ence and Helplessness, but is a little man, who does everything just as the grown' up hero of the Western stories would ao complish it, and without any of the accompaniments of childish life. Again, the assistance rendered to the hero or heroine of the tale by the wonderful in struments they employ is usually at least of a much less essential character, so that one gets the impression that these magi- col aids or instruments are mere acci dents in the story, and not characteristic points of it at all. In the Western tales one knows at once that if a talking fox or horse has a part to play in the story, this gifted crea ture will erect the whole machinery of marvel to the end, till its bead on, or the process is performed, whatever it may be, which restores it to its primal shapes. But in the Indian fairy-story there is no strong pre' sumption of anything of the kind. For instance, in the story of "The Demon Conquered by the King's Son," number 24. the tiger-cub and'the eaglet who 101-lnu- the vonnc nrince and take part in his fortunes are hardly of any use to him at all. They help to restore him to life after the last great struggle by ripping open the body of the evil lairy by whom he had been swallowed, and sitting upon him to keep him warm till he revives again; but for the rest, they are mere glorious appendages to his fortunes. The engle lends him a certain poetical pres tige, by flying over his head "to shiold him from the sun, but the tiger-cub does not even accompany him in most of his labors at all. In a Western tale, we should have had the most astonishing evulonce of wisdom and dexterity as cribed to any such followers. Again, in the Western tales the greatest possible is made of the magical powers of inani mate objects, such as magic clubs, which do all the fighting for themselves. The most curious indication of a fanci ful Hindoo superstition which we find in this voluuio is the story of the man who went to ceek his fate, and found it in the shape of a prostrate stone prostrate as symbolizing his extreme misery which stone he beat with a thick stick till night fell, when "God sent a soul into the poor man's fate, and it became a man, who stood looking at the poor man, and said, 'Why have you beaten me so much?'" when the man replies, "Be cause you were lying down, and I am very poor, and at home my wife and chil dren are starving;' " whereupon the fate rejoins, "Things will go well with you now," and after the soul leaves it remains thereafter standing, and so symbolizing the man's prosperous condition. This, -certainly, is anything but a fairy story, though there are subordinate elements in it of the fairy story kind. It suggests very powerfully how dead a thing Fate appears to the people's mind in India, that it should be represented by an up right stone for the prosperous, and a prostrate 6tone for the miserable. Yet the picture of the man belaboring his dead fate with a stick till GoA gave it a momentary life and voice, seems to us curiously unlike the submissiveness of the average Hindoo nature; while it suggests a singular tol erance in God for this active rebellion against fate, as though the fate were none of his ordering betraying the con verse of that Greek notion that there is a decree of necessity behind God, the notion, namely, that there is a God be hind, though not within, the ordinary decree of necessity. Certainly this story looks as if it expressed the genius of a less patient and resigned race than the Hindoos. The comi element in the Hindoo fairy stories is to ns hardly comic. It oonsists in such monstrous exaggera tions of fsats of strength and skill that it is difficult to find in them the ele ment of possibility requisite to give impossibility a plausible air, When the wrestlers danehter throws three el phants in one throw onto the roof of the Rajah's palace; when a bundle of camels fall into a princess' eye; when a mouse runs away, driving a herd of .cows before it, we are not amused at the impossibility, as , the people among whom those stories are popular evidently must be. It is impossibility within limits impossi bility hedged in by imaginary conditions which seem, as it were, to make impossi bility just possible that amuses the Western nature; hence, the elaborate limits which all our fairy stories impose on the exercise of raagio gifts. But in these Indian fairy stories the fewer the limits imposed on the impossibilities they contain, the more amusing appar ntly are ther regarded. In the Indian fairy stories.'the bigger the wonder, the mora successful is the story. In the Western fairy stories, the more subtle the conditions by which the wonder is limited, tue more successful is the story as at marvels without limit we should fail to be amused, or even excited. Yon can not exoiU wonder in a Western mind without exhibiting the frame-work of the wonder the stops and keys, which, if u7 uo not explain, at an event Rive a sort of law to the marvelous. But in the Indian fairy tales, the wonder breaks all bounds, and swells and swells till there is hardly anything visible to the nuna except a sort of infinite impossi cuity. Beep Sea Researches. The Nineteenth Century, in a recent issue, says: Dr. Carpenter, the English physioist, has recently published some remarkable results of his elaborate studies of the latest dceo sea exulora- tions. The work of the soientitio cir cumnavigation expedition in the dial longer, .though completed in 1870, has not until within a few months, if even now been fully reduced, and some of the most important discoveries are now announced by Dr. Carpenter, the originator. One of the first questions its labors contribute to solve is the depth and configurations of the ocean basins. The prevailing notion of the sodbedB. vr. carpenter shows, needs consider able- modification, none of them have been carefully outlined, exoept that of the North Atlantic when sounded with i view to laying the first Atlantic cable "The form of the depressed area which lodges the water of tho deepocean," he says, "is rather to be likened to that of a flat waiter or a tea tray, surrounded by an elevated and steeply sloping rim, than to that of the 'basin' with which it is commonly compared:" and he adds: "The great continental platforms usually rise very abruptly from the margins of real occanio depressed areas. The average depth of the ocean floors is now ascertained to be about 13,000 feet. As the average height of the entire land mass of the globe above sea-level is about 1000 feet, and sea area about two and three-fourths times that of the land, it follows that the total volume of ocean water is thirty-six times that of the land above the sea-level. These deductions. seemingly unimportant except to the votary of science, are destined perhaps to serve the highest practical purposes of deep sea telegraphy. The intelligence now auarried out of tho enormous colleo tion of later ocean researches shows the modern engineer and capitalist of the feasibility of depositing a telegraphic cable over almost any part of the ocean's floor, and ought to give new confidence in the success of all such enterprises properly devised and equipped. When it is remembered that at the beginning of this century La Place, the greatest mathematician, calculated or assumed the average depth of the ocean ut four miles (or 8,000 feet more than Dr. Car penter determines it to be from actual survey), and that La Place's conclusion was the received view among scientists until 1850, or later, we got some idea of the advance made in this branch of ter restrial physics by modern research. Not less interesting is a deduction Dr. Carpen makes from tho deep sea temperature observations in the North Atlantic. In conseqnence of the evaporation produced by the long exposure of the equatorial Atlantic currents, its water contains such an excess of salt as, in spite of its high temperature, to be specifically heavier than the colder underflows which reach the equator from the opposite Arctic and Antarctic basins; and, consequently, it substitutes itself by gravitation for the colder water to a depth of several hun dred fathoms. "Thus it conveys the solar heat downward in such a manner as to make the North Atlantic between the parallels of 20 and 40 degrees a great reservoir of warmth. The cnniatio effoct of this vertical transfor of equato rial heat is obvious. As the great heat- bearing currents which enter the North Atlantic traversed its bosom as surface currents, they would expend their warmth largely in the high latitudes. But, as their heavy and highly heated volumes in large measure descend to the deeper strata south of the fortieth paral lel, then stores of tropical temperature are permanently arrested off our eastern coast, and ultimately made subservient to our climate. HOW THE iJlSHOP DECEIVED HIS TlTLE. The Archbishop of York has a charm ing wife, and her name is Zoe. There is a funny story told that when the Arch- bishoprio was conferred on vr. Thomp son then Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol be was in bed suffering from neuralgia, and his letters were taken up to him and read with his breakfast. Upon opening the offioial document which contained the notification of his advancement, the Bishop rather hur riedly rang his bell and desired that his wife might come to him ut once. On en- entering the bedroom she was met by the startling exclamation, "My dear, I am the Archbishop of York!" The sur prised lady imagined that her husband s maladv had affected his senses, and that he had become suddenly delirious. So, pretending to humor his fancy and gently acquiescing, without expressing her astonishment she retired without congratulations to Bumiuon tho doctor to treat this new aud distressing symp tom. Not until his arrival and a close inspection of the official document was she persuaded that the Archiepiscopal 1 chair was no delusion, but a ' real and substantial recognition of her husband's abilities and merits. Since that time she has been his frequent and sympa thetic companion in much of his public work, and on all occasions when a lady's presence is needed to render his actions complete she is sure to appear. Mr. Tremlett, the British Consul at Saigon, mentions as a remarkable peculi arity of the natives of the country that they have the great toe of each foot separated from the others like the thumb of the hand, and it can be nsed in much the same manner, though not to the same extent. This distinctive mark of an Annamite is not, however, nsaally seel in the vicinity of Saigon, but is now confined to the inhabitants of the more northern section of the empire, where the race has remained more distinct. This peculiarity is the meaning of the native name of the Annamite race; and that the nanfe and peculiarity are of great antiquity is shown bv the mention in Chinese annals 2300 B. C., as that (or those) of one of the "four barbarian" tribes that then formed the boundaries of the Chinese Empire. A Veteran Engineer Of late years the man who "fit with Andrew Jackson" has dropped almost oompietely out of sight, and is only sec ond in rarity to the shaky old customer who sits in a corner and does nothing all uj long except remember the Yorktown surrender. A Time reporter recently re otuved a hint that one of the heroes of New Orleans was engaged as an engineer in charge of the stationary engine under mo tummiia oiuoe, on r ourth street, lie went down into the basement and had Mr. William Haynes pointed out to him as the hero for whom be was searching pleasant appearing and sooiable old gen tleman, who, in spite of his white hair auu ooaru, did not soem more than sev enty, but whose reminiscences (which uure repeaieu as his reminisconces) were hazy with tho mists of anthiuitv. extending back into the Homeric era of the republic, when the men were not such as live in these modern and dozen erate days. He cave the renorter a chair. worked a valve on his engine which let off a coupio or pounds of steam, and being Buuuiwu ior uis story, gave some portions of it which are here set forth: He was born, he said, in what is now White county, Tennessee, on Christmas day, iioo, wuere ue lived untUJackson com menced raising troops. He shouldered his rifle and went, lav ing it aside at New Orleans to roll cotton bales, behind one of which he took his stand and shot over it at the whites of British eyes when thev advanced in rango. Like tho majority of men who nave been in a great battle, he remom bers very little beyond veils and the crack of rifles and noise of cannon. The English aim was bad and he has no scars to tell of his achievements. After the army was disbanded he shipped as seoond mate on the Frenoh steamer Grampus, which ran between New Orleans aud the west coast of Africa as a slaver, holding his berth for three years, during which time the vessel brought over three thou sand negroes for the slave pens of New Orleans. The captain was a Frenchman, who, with more than Yankee shrewdness, worked both ports of entry for all they were worth. He kidnapped negroes in Africa, or had them kidnapped for him, and in New Orleans ho induced white girls by offers of high wages to accom pany him as ohambermaids. These girls would mysteriously disappear from the Grampus as she lay in some African inlet, no one. exceDtinar the can tain and one or two of his confidential friends, knowing what became of them. Their disappearance foimod a standard topio of conversation among the men, who formulated the theory that they were sold to the African chief tains for wives. This went on for throe years, until on the last trip the Grampus, outward bound from Now Orleans, car ried as a chambermaid a young girl who had left respoctable connections and "gone to tho bad," using a phrase whioh is trite but euphonious. She had been picked up on the street by the slaver, who never dreamed that any fuss would be made about her. When the return to New Orleans had been made, the girl's relatives had traced her to the Grampus. They demanded her, and in the faoo of the stories of the men, the Captain's story was not credited, and the city be coming hot for him, ho left it for good, Haynes remaining, aud shipping as second engineer on a little side-wheel steamer, the Don Juan, which was about to attempt the feat of bringing a cargo of coffee aud sugar to St. Louis. The trip up the river occupied twenty-four dayB, and the boat's crew were obliged to cut their own wood and to kill their own game. Mr. Haynes is positive that the Don Juan is the first steamboat whioh ever reached St. Louis, and says the seo ond was the Little Cheyenne, which was built up the Ohio river somewhere. After the Don Juan ran on a snag and sank in Dogtooth Bend, he got another berth as engineer, running the river in that ca pacity for many years on the walk in the Water, the Felice Anne, tho John Perry, the Belle of Orleans and other boats, whose very names are now hardly a memory. During the war the jteuerai authorities sent to St. Louis for a man who knew how to run a low-pressure en gine, and Mr. Haynes answering the con ditions, took charge of the engine of the Sumpter, and witnessed the engagement between that boat and the Essex against the Confederate ram Arkansas when tho latter was blown up near Baton Rouge. He has since the war given up both river and local engineering and has settled down to a stationary engine. His time is spent almost entirely in the basement, under the Yandalia offices, from which he does not often go out, devoting his at tention, to inventions for the saving of fuel in stationery engines, by which he has succeeded in reducing the expendi ture of coal for his engine from one thousand seven hundred to five hundred bushels per month. Mt. Louis Times. Swift'e Akt of Cheerfulness. Subsidiary to this personal courage was his hopeful way of looking at the world. He was always practising and inculcating the disposition; "Some very excellent people," he said, "tell you they dare not hope." To me it seems muoh more im pious to dare to despair. He had an ex cellent rule for the happiness and wisdom of life as to the future, not to look too far into it for the inevitable, though probably distant, disaster. "Take short views, hope for tho best, and trust in God." Inclined by temperament to anticipate coming evils for our wit, spite of his many jests, was a serious man he resisted the atribilous tendency and avoided drawing drafts on the misery of futurity. "Never, he said, "givo way to. melancholy; nothing encroaches more. fight against it vigorously. One great remedy is, to take short views of life. Are you happy now ? Are yon likely to remain so till this evening? or next week? or next month? or next year? Then why destroy present happiness by a dittont misery, which, may never come at all, or you may never live to see it? for every substantial grief has twenty shadows, and most of them shadows of your own making." It was said of the happy na ture of Oliver Goldsmith that he bad a knack at hoping; with Sidney Smith it was principle. Cheerfulness he made an art. He liked household illuminations of a good English coal fire, "'the ling thing," he said, "in a dead room,-" abun dance of. lights, flower on his table, prints and pictures on bis walls. The race is not always for the swift. The enssednesa and cunning of the spi der enables it to get away with the fly. Hill aud Valley In London. The first English inhabitants of the most populous of English counties in present day where a handful of rude settlors dwelling far apart along the hanks of the Thames, and still farther apart in the valleys of the Bront or of irioutaries of the Lea. A few villages markod the conrse of the ancient roans; but there were no populous towns no great market-places, no fortresses Down to the time of the Norman Con quest, and muoh later Miil.llniinY ra. niained half cultivated, and a vast forost "ounsued over the face of the country. The land springs of the heavy clays sent forth water brooks in abundauoe, and the "mens nourished willows and hazels, uuks and booches. Many of the namos which survive tell ns of this time. The North Haw and the South Haw were divi ded by the Coin. Acton is the town of the oak. .Norwood and Ashford, Hounslow and Willesden. Southgato. Highgate aud a score of names besides testify to the ancient condition of the country. There were, as there still are, high hills and Usser ones, but there was, and is, but uuie level ground. Tho unilulatinor character of the surface of Middlesex cannot be better tested than by taking the levels along a line at a distance of about a mile from the river's bank. This is easily done by following tho course of a great modern thoronchfare like Ox ford street. Thore is always a straight una or roadway from Shepherd s bush to the site of the old oitv wall at Newmite: but in spite of the lovoling process which the ground has suffered, thore are not 10U vanls of rnnllv flat, crnnnil nlnttir tlm wholo route. At Shephord's-bush we are only twenty-one feet about the sea j - - r - level. Thence thore is a gradual ascont to Plough lane on tho top of wotting inn. is thirty-four feet above the ornamental water in Ken sington Gardens, whonoe the grouud again rises, nntil at Park lane a height of ninety-two feet is reached. From Cum berland gate there is a slight downward slope to tho bottom of the valley, through which the St. Mary or Ty bourne onpe flowed. This is at sixty-two feet; but the ground rises immediately, and at Regent Circus the level of Notting Hill is again almost attained. From Regent Circus to Farringdon street, in the valley through which the open Fleet river flowed within our memory, we find a constant but slight full; aud ut the site of what used to be the Holborn Bridge, below Snow Hill, we are a littlo higher than at Shcpherd's-Bush. Muuy such examples might be given from the suburbs of London. Thus Regent street falls as much as thirty feet betweon Ox ford street and Piccadilly, and there is a difference of nearly one hundred feet between Westminster Abbey and St. Maryleboue. Along another groat thor oughfare, tho Strand, there are also changes of level, but they are slight in comparison; for the threo brooks which once crossed the roadway under bridges have long siuce disap peared, and the valleys through which they rau have been raised to the genoral level. It is the saino with almost evory part of the county, aud thore is likewise but little variation in its geological fea tures. Here and there a hill higher than the rest has a capping of sand; hero and there a valloy deeper than tho others has layer of peat. The glacial drift cast over it at some remote period, and fos sils, are occasionally found. But, to the most part, Middlesex offers as little to the geologist as to the landscape painter, and the suburbs of London rapidly obliterate all the more prominent natural features. Whore aro the rivers which Used to flow by the meadows of St. Mary- bourne or Westbourne, of liolbourne, Kilbourne? The names are still thore, but the water is gone, to tho eye at least. Quarterly Review. Man Destroys, Mature Economizes. Mr. Marsh, in his most interesting and instructive book, "Man and Nature," shows how spendthrift man has, by his ignorance and neglect of the laws of na ture, ruined for the purposes of habita tion largo portions of his fair inheritance on tho surface of the earth. The shores of the Mediterranean exhibit to-day, in many places, dosolation not due to polit ical or national decay, but to man's reck less abuse and wanton dostructiveuess. Although this may be excused to somo extent by tho ignorance of formor days for study of the relation of nature to man is of vory recent date there can bo no excuse, in our moreoulightenod time, when knowledge of all kinds is so access ible, for not ouly abusing inanimate na ture, but for expelling from the earth so many of our living fellow-inhabitants. We are not ouly forewarnod by our pres ent knowledge, but we hove reason to believe that earnest study would' in a few years reveal to us many of the now secret and hidden operations of nature. We know, for example, little of the mys terious arrangements by which nature disposes, after their brief life, of the countless birds and animals born into the world. Many millions are born annu ally; as many millions must annually die. We see the smaller birds occasionally seized and devoured by the birds of prev; we know that the fox, tho weasel, the'wild-cat and the mink live largely on birds, but this does not account for their mortality. How rarely we come across dead birds or animals in our walks through the woods and fields! Nature is the most decorous of sextons. She lays her oountless dead to rest in the bosom of the earth noiselessly, and with no trace to offend our senses or our foelings. Perpetual birth, youth and renovation are her monuments in her everlasting cemetery. Man lives surrounded by her living forms; she gives him little or no hint of the mortality of her children. It is from his own lot and his imperfect dealings with his own decay that man de rives his sad lessons and painful annexa tions with mortality. As we rarely know individuals in animal or bird life, these races seem in nature's arrangement im mortal. The spring brings them to us with tho certainty and freshness of new leaves and flowers. We see the leaves and flowers decay; but, as a general rule, we have little consciousness and scarcely any knowledge of the death and the de cay of animated nature. Could we know this we could greatly enlarge our power of dealing with the animal race, with n nmhtbilitr of increasing their nnm'bers and the average duration of their lives. InUmalional Betiev. "My work's dun," remarked the collee tor as he started out in the morning. Englhh Hate Barks. Articles of plate are axempt from tha capricious desire of the maker to see his mark upon his goods. The Goldsmiths' Company, associated as early as 1827, aud regularly inoorportaed seventy years later in the reign of Richard II., ai present undertakes this duty. As the law now stands, all articles of plate man nfactnred in or near London must be sent to Goldsmiths' Hall, to be tested and to be marked. For this assay they reeeive irom the manufacturers amounting to some five or six thousand a year, and from the Government a fixed salary for collecting the excise duty on gold and silver, and paying it into the iauk ot England. The assayers exercise ineir iuncuons with skill and impar tiality. Small particlos are in each in' stance soraned off the roods to ha mb mittod to Uio test, and these are dulv analyzed, me assayers do not know. and are not allowed to know, from whose manufactured goods the particles have been scrapod off, but additional severity in me wsi is auoptea wnere any iuauu faoturor is found to have often sent goods below the standard. The marks adopted by the Goldsmiths' Hall are five in number, and each has its own special signinoanee. lhere is the sovereigns head, which indicates plainly enough the reign. Next follows the lion passant; this is the standard mark, and is known to have boon in use at the commence ment of Queen Elizabeth's reign, but was probably introduced in Henry YIII.'s. The price mark is iniDrossed next to it, and was fixed by one of those numerous acts which was passed in Wil liam III.'s reign to regulate and improve .... . . . the condition of the coinage. Two other impressions romain unao counted for. One is the leopard's head, which is par excellence tho hall mark, and the othor is the maker's mark, which from long custom is added to the remaining four. But the period of the manufactures is not left to the mere vaguoness of the sovereign's roign. The "date letter" supplies the missing infor mation. Twenty letters of the alphabet are used for this purpose, the series com mencing with the first, omitting J and terminating with T. On the 30th of May evory yoar the letter is changod, and the shape of the letter every twenty years. Thus, from 1709 to 18G0 ordinary oopitals were employed. Tho letter D would in dicate that tho article passed the Gold smiths' Hall in 179!). With 1810 com menced the sorios of small lotters, so that a date letter of d wonld fix the yoar 1820. Old English capitals followed till 1850, and the next sorios coininonced with small English letters. These varied alphabetical serios are of very old date, the earliest known commencing with the year 1438. But though London is the chief seat of the manufacture of plate in England, there wore other towns which had their own assay offices or halls. Birmingham and Shoflleld did a large trade, and constant relations were established between the local hall aud Foster lane. For this purpose what was called a "diet box" passed at the end of the year from the country town to the capital. The assayer in Birmingham scrapod eight grains from every troy pound of manufactured plate. Four of those he rotaiued and at once assayed; the other moioty was carefully deposited in the diet box, which ootamod speci mens from all the articles manufactured. Once a yoar the box was sent up to the capital. The assay master of the royal mint would then tako a fair averago of all the small portions it containod, and sol emnly mako his assay. If the average reuchod the standard, the local assayor recoived a certificate; if not, he was fined. Marriage Fees In Russia. If we may judgo from an anoodote in tho Smolenuker Bote, there are parts of the Russian Empire in which It is no easy matter to get married, owing to tho autocratic willfulness of the Russian clergy. A schoolmaster in the district of Juoknow was engagod to wed the daughter of a land owner in tho neigh borhood, whose wealth was not all proportionate to his acres.' The bride- called on the priest of the lady's village, in ordor to settlo the amount of tue wed ding fee. The clergyman fixed it at 25 roubles. Unhappily, the bride's father was determined to make a show more in accordance with his ancestral dignity than with his impoverished condition, and invited all his kinsfolk and ac quaintances far and near to attend tho ceromony. The result was mat tue pro cession to the church included no fewer than eleven carriages, all full of wedding guests. When the priest saw this magnificent preparation, he hurriod to the bride groom, and informed bim that the fee for a marriage of such pretensions would not be twenty-five hundred ronblos. Whon the man pleadod his poverty as a school-master the pastor replied by pointing to the sigus of his father-m ow s wealth. The wedding party held a consultation, and, indignant at the priest's conduct, resolved that the whole procossion should drive off to the next village. The priest outwitted them, however; his messenger arrived at bis brother clorio's door long bofore tha lumbering coachos, so that when they reached the church, and asked the price of the sacerdotal function, the parish priest was ready with the reply, "one hundred roubles." The procession started again tor a lurtner village, but the messenger had been there before them : the priest of the place could not marry them for less than one hundred roubles, lacy experienced a similar discomfiture according to the reports, at no less than four village churches, and it was only after a long drive across the country that they suc ceeded in finding "a little father," who readily consented to bestow the sacra mental benediction of matrimony for the fee which the lady s own pastor had originally uVed. London Qlobe. USABMED DtTEHSI AQAIXST A DoO. A gentleman gives the following ad vice is relation to dogs : If you enter a lot where there is a vicious dog, be care ful to remove your hat or cap as the ani mal approaches you, and hold the same down by your side, between yourself and the dog. When you have done this you have secured perfect immunity from aa atuofc. The dog wiu not atiacs yon if this advice is followed. Such is my faith in this policy that I will pay all doctor bills from dog bites, aud funeral expenses for deaths from hydrophobia. ALL SORTS. It is perfectly natural that a man should oe his mistake after he has made it. Blondiu threatens to walk over Niagara this summer again. Better sail over. Sparking across a gardon fenco admits of a good deal being said on both sides. The Baltimore thermometers have been singing "Ninety and Nine" in the shade. Darwin is now over seventy, and he will probably soon find out all about his ancestors. An unhappy marriage is like an elec tric machine it makes one dance, but yon can't lot go. The dosire to go somewhere in hot weather is only equaled by the desire to get back again. Edmund Yates says that thoughtless ness makes bores, and that many of them are excellent and amiable beings. A Western Journal hoods an article, "A lunatio Escapes and Marries a Widow." Escaped? He got caught. Fourteen new elemontary bodies, class ed as metals, are announced to have boon discovered within the past two years. Professor T. S. Humpidge throws grave doubts on the reality of the dis covery of any ono of them, and insists upon more accurate and crucial tests on the part of chemists. Mr. C. V. Riley maintains that the army worm in the latitude of St Louis develops four generations annually; that its common mode of hibernating is not in the egg or chrysalis, but in tho larvie state, and that the injurious brood is that which succeeds the hibernating ono, or, iu other words, the progeny of the moths of the larvno. Tho origin of the South African dia mond is, according to J. R. Smit, vol canic, being found in a primitive gangue, and presenting signs of merely second ary modifications. . The mines, he holds, are extinct volcanio craters, and the dia monds have boen formod at the expense of organio matter under the joint influ ence of great pressure and strong heat. Mr. Rotherv. in his elaborate official report to the British Board of Trade on the Tay Bridge disaster, utters this sweeping condemnation of tho structure: "The bridire was badlv designed, badlv constructed and badly maintained, and its downfall was due to inherent defects in the structure, whioh must, sooner or later, have brought it down." So much for that marvol of engineering. Celluloid is one of the most remark able of modern inventions, and bids fair to be not less extensively or vari ously usod than vulcanized rubber. It is produced, says the Journal of hi diutry, by mixing gum-camphor with a pulp of gun-cotton, and subjecting the combination to a high degree of pressure and heat. The result is a hard product of extraordinary toughness and elasticity. Apropos of the Tanner excitement is the following anecdote of a London lady of fashion: She was walking with one she doomed a kindred spirit. The lunch boll rung. The lady was thin and (esthetic, and proud of her mental and physioal ethcrealness. Her oompanion suggested a move to the dining-room. The lady said, with one of her sweotest, saddest smiles, "l have eaten halt a rose; have kept the other half for my supper. Observations of snow collected on mountain tops, within the Arotio cir cle, far beyond the influenoe of facto ries and smoke, seem to confirm the supposition that minute particles of iron float in the atmosphere, and in time fall to tho earth. Prof. Nordenskjold, who examined snow in the far north, beyond Spitzbergen, says he found in it exceedingly minute partioles of nietallio iron, phosphorus and cobalt. The London papors record an extra ordinary exhibition of heroism by a little girl only throe and one-half yoars old. She and her sister were playing in their father's gardon, close to the river Mon mow, at Monmouth. The youngor child was ranning after tho elder, when the latter foil headlong down some steps into the river, where the water was deeper than usual, owing to tho recent storms. Seeiug her sister carried down the stream the younger girl plunged in to the rescue and seized her by the hat and hair. She held on, but the stream swept her sister beneath a bridge, her hat and a quantity of hair being left in tho little ono s hand. The younger child then managod to get ashore, and, running home, gave tha alarm. A number of persons hurried to the spot just in time to rescuo the girl. in shallow water below tho bridge, before the stream had carried hor away. How ns Got CitEDiT.-An enterprising and fuirdealing business man in Augusta, Me., was lately mot at the door of his grocory by an honest looking Fronchman, an entire strangorto him, who asked credit for a barrel of flour. I can pay half ze cash down and re balance next Saturday, sure." The merchant, witbont hesitation, turned to one of his clerks, and, kindly smiling upon the would be ownor of a barrel of flour said: "This good man wants to get trusted for a barrel of flour; he'll pay half down and the rest next Satur day. I'll risk him; he's good as gold. Open a fre-u barrel, weigh out halt, de liver it in good shape at the house, put the barrel away safely, and take it down next Saturday when he pays the bal ance. Never refuse to trust an honest looking man for bread." It was done, the money paid, and the French gentle man departed, rejoicing in an abundance of flour and unlimited credit. A Curious r act. Bands of music are forbidden to play on most of the largo bridges of the world. A constant suc cession of sound waves, especially such as come from the playing of a good band, will excite the wires to vibration. At first the vibrations are very slight, but they increase as the sound waves continue to come. The principal reason why bands are not allowed to play while crossing certain bridges, the suspension bridge at Niagara, for instance, is that if followed by processions of any kind they will keep step with the musio and this regular step would cause the wires to vibrate. At the suspension bridge military companies are not allowed to march across in regular step, but break ranks. The regular trotting gait of a large dog across a suspension bridge is more dangerous to the bridge than a heavily loaded wagon arawn oj a team of large horses.