Facts and fancies for the curious from the harvest-fields of literature

by Unknown

MISCELLANEA CURIOSA

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.

Hon. C. E. Clarke.

Marriage in Undress

A century ago the law of Maine obliged a husband to pay all the debts of his bride in case she brought him any clothing. As outer clothing was legal property which could be taken for debt, an unfortunate couple who were deeply in love resorted to the experiment described in the following certificate of marriage to be found to-day in the ancient records of Lincoln County:

“Certificate of Marriage.”

From record of return marriages to the Court of Sessions, Lincoln County, under date of July 7, 1775:

This is to certify that John Gatchell and Sarah Cloutman, both inhabitants of Kennebec River, a little below Fort Halifax, and out of the bounds of any town, but within the county of Lincoln, were first published, as the law directs, at said court and there married; said Cloutman being in debt was desirous of being married with no more clothes on her than her shift, which was granted, and they married each other on the 21st day of November, A.D. 1767.

Attest: William Lithgow,

Justice of Peace.

A City in Darkness

The Romans, after they had attained a high culture, when they had filled their city with noble architecture, sculpture, engineering, monuments, and other accompaniments of maturity, had no system of street-lightning. Not a trace of anything of the kind has been discovered. It is referred to in no extant books. It is, in short, as certain as anything can be, short of absolute demonstration, that the masters of the world endured dark streets to the end. They had plenty of good oil-lamps in their houses. They even invented mechanical lamps, something like the Carcel burners, for use in their libraries. But after sunset it was always dangerous to walk the streets of Rome, and the Roman police (who were called “cops” in the slang of the period) had enough to do. In fact, they had more than enough to do, for they combined the functions of policemen and firemen. Rome had a regular body of men, some nine thousand strong. The police were well treated, if they were worked hard. Their quarters were palaces of marble and stone; spacious, airy, furnished with everything which could conduce to the comfort and even luxury of the inmates. Those old Roman roundsmen and policemen were, like all the ancient Italians, greatly addicted to scribbling on the walls. These scribblings, after being buried for twelve or fifteen hundred years or so, are now being uncovered and deciphered. They are called graffiti and from them many intimate details of the old life may be gathered. The police of ancient Rome were very human. They set down their complaints and their opinions of their captains and superintendents, their poor jokes (funny enough to them, no doubt) and all their little affairs.

The Graffiti at Pompeii

August Mau, of the German Archæological Institute in Rome, says, “The graffiti form the largest division of the Pompeiian inscriptions, comprising about three thousand examples, or one-half of the entire number; the name is Italian, being derived from a verb meaning to scratch. Writing upon walls was a prevalent habit in antiquity, as shown by the remains of graffiti at Rome and other places besides Pompeii, a habit which may be accounted for in part by the use of the sharp-pointed stylus with wax tablets; the temptation to use such an instrument upon the polished stucco was much greater than in the case of pens and lead-pencils upon the less carefully finished wall surfaces of our time. Pillars or sections of wall are covered with scratches of all kinds,—names, catchwords of favorite lines from the poets, amatory couplets, and rough sketches, such as a ship, or the profile of a face. The skit occasionally found on walls to-day,—

“‘Fools’ names, as well as faces,

Are often seen in public places,’—

has its counterpart in a couplet which has been preserved:

“‘Admiror, paries, te non cecidisse ruinas,

Qui tot scriptorum taedia sustineas.’

(Truly ’tis wonderful, wall, that you have not fallen in ruin;

You that have to support so many nauseous scribblings.)

“Taken as a whole, the graffiti are less fertile for our knowledge of Pompeiian life than might have been expected. The people with whom we should most eagerly desire to come into direct contact, the cultivated men and women of the ancient city, were not accustomed to scratch their names upon stucco or to confide their reflections and experiences to the surface of a wall. Some of the graffiti, to judge from the height at which we find them above the floor, were undoubtedly made by the hands of boys and girls; for the rest, we may assume that the writers were as little representative of the best elements of society as are the tourists who scratch their names upon ancient monuments to-day. Nevertheless, we gain from these scribblings a lively idea of individual tastes, passions, and experiences.”

Here and there in the collection we find imitations of the jests of Hierocles, and sometimes we are amused by inconsistencies and contradictions which remind us of the modern Hibernicism. Of this character is a Greek line scratched upon a wall on the Palatine hill in Rome: “Many persons have here written many things; I alone refrain from writing.”

Superstition

As to the amusing superstitions we so often witness in people of intelligence and impressible nature, the question, even for those who indulge in such fancies, is not whether they are reasonable. Lord Byron would not commence an undertaking of any kind on Friday. But even Byron, with his remarkable sensitiveness to impressions, and his habit of brooding over the mysteries of life, would not venture to assert that such conduct is reasonable. The “Autocrat of the Breakfast Table” says, “Jeremy Bentham’s logic, by which he proved he couldn’t possibly see a ghost, is all very well—in the daytime. All the reason in the world will never get impressions of childhood out of a man’s head.” Elsewhere, Dr. Holmes says, “We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were early implanted in his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them, he will still feel as a famous French woman did about ghosts, ‘Je n’y crois pas; mais je les crains,’—‘I don’t believe in them; but I am afraid of them, nevertheless.’”

An Itemized Bill

An old church in Belgium decided to repair its properties and employed an artist to touch up some of its old paintings. Upon presenting his bill, the committee in charge refused payment unless the details were specified, whereupon he presented the items as follows:

To correcting Ten Commandments	3.12
Embellishing Pontius Pilate and putting new ribbon on his hat	3.02
Putting new tail on rooster of St. Peter and mending his coat	3.20
Repluming and regilding wing of Guardian angel	5.18
Washing servant of high priest and putting carmine on his cheeks	5.02
Renewing heaven, adjusting the stars, and cleaning up the moon	7.14
Touching up Purgatory and restoring lost souls	3.06
Taking spots off son of Tobias	1.30
Putting ear-rings in Sarah’s ears	1.31
Brightening up flames of hell, putting new tail on the devil, cleaning left hoof, and doing several odd jobs for the damned	7.17
Rebordering the Robes of Herod and adjusting his wig	4.00
Cleaning Balaam’s ass and putting new shoes on him	1.70
Putting new stone in David’s sling, enlarging head of Goliath, and extending Saul’s Leg	6.18
Decorating Noah’s ark and putting new head on Shem	4.31
Mending shirt of prodigal son and cleaning his ear	3.39
Total	59.10

Latin Pronunciation

A French savant, M. Garaud, has just published a book which professes to settle the vexed question of pronunciation of Latin by the ancient Romans. He says: “The patois of Pamiers, in the Department of Ariège, is nothing else than Latin exiled on the borders of the Ariège. It has been brought there with its original pronunciation and accentuation. Without the aid of any book the ear has sufficed to preserve its first form and intonation after eighteen centuries’ use. The most delicate inflections of the voice have been kept. Thanks to the instinct of harmony and the love of sonority, Latin pronunciation has been exactly transmitted to us.”

Prevention better than Cure

We learn from the parish records of Oberammergau that when the plague of 1633 was sweeping the by-ways of the Bavarian Tyrol, eighteen peasants met together and vowed that if the plague were stayed they would, once in ten years, present in living pictures the Passion of Christ. That vow has been faithfully kept. On Fish Street Hill, in London, where the great fire of 1666 started, the citizens erected a commemorative monument as an expression of their gratitude that the fire had destroyed the last vestige of the pestilence which, in the course of a few months, had carried off sixty-eight thousand five hundred and ninety-six of the inhabitants of the metropolis. We who live in an age of broader enlightenment have learned that the line of practical beneficence leads to prophylaxis rather than to religious vows or sacrificial offerings, and points to higher promise and larger performance. We, too, are building a monument, but it will be more enduring than stone or bronze, and will immortalize its trust in one word, SANITATION.