A reliable gentleman who witnessed an execution, wrote as follows: "It appears to be the best of all modes of inflicting the punishment of death, combining the greatest impression on the spectator with the least possible suffering to the victim. It is so rapid that I should doubt whether there was any suffering; but from the expression of the countenance, when the executioner held up the head, I am inclined to believe that sense and consciousness may remain for a few seconds after the head is off. The eyes seemed to retain speculation for a moment or two, and there was a look in the ghastly stare with which they stared upon the crowd, which implied that the head was aware of its ignominious situation."
Chateaubrun's Escape from the Guillotine.
During the Reign of Terror, M. de Chateaubrun was sentenced to death and sent to execution with twenty other prisoners; but after the fifteenth head had fallen, the guillotine got out of order, and a workman was required to repair it. The six remaining victims were left standing in front of the machine with their hands tied behind them. A French crowd is very curious, and the people kept pressing forward to see the man who was arranging the guillotine. By degrees M. de Chateaubrun, who was to the rear of his companions, found himself in the front line of the spectators, then in the second, and finally well behind those who had come to see his head cut off. Before the man could get the guillotine in working order night began to fall, and M. de Chateaubrun slipped away. When in the Champs Elysees he told a man that a wag had tied his hands and stole his hat, and this simple individual cut him free. A few days later M. de Chateaubrun escaped from France.
A Lucky Find.
During the month of April, 1733, Sir Simon Stuart, of Hartley, England, while looking over some old writings, found on the back of one of them a memorandum noting that 1500 broad pieces were buried in a certain spot in an adjoining field. After a little digging the treasure was found in a pot, hidden there in the time of the civil wars by his grandfather, Sir Nicholas Stuart.
Paradise of Old Hats.
The group of islands known as the Nicobars, situated about one hundred and fifty miles south of the Andamans, have been but little explored, though the manners and customs of the inhabitants of these islands offer interesting peculiarities. One of the most noticeable, and one which seriously affects the trade of the islands, is the passion for old hats which pervades the whole frame-work of society. No one is exempt, and young and old endeavor to outvie each other in the singularity of shape no less than in the number of the old hats they can acquire during a lifetime. On a fine morning at the Nicobars it is not unusual to see the surface of the ocean in the vicinity of the islands dotted over with canoes, in each of which the noble savage, with nothing whatever on but the conventional slip of cloth and a tall white hat with a black band, may be watched standing up and catching fish for his daily meal. Second-hand hats are more in request, new hats being looked upon with suspicion and disfavor. The passion is so well known that traders from Calcutta make annual excursions to the Nicobars with cargoes of old hats, which they barter for cocoanuts, the only product of the island, a good, tall white hat with a black band bringing from fifty-five to sixty-five good cocoanuts. Intense excitement pervades the island while the trade is going on. When the hats or the cocoanuts have come to an end, the trader generally lands a flask or two of rum, and the whole population, in their hats, get drunk without intermission until the rum also comes to an end.
Wedding-Rings.
The wedding-ring, symbolical of the perpetuity of the conjugal relation, has ever been the accepted accompaniment of marriage. Its being put on the fourth finger of the left hand has been continued from long-established usage, because of the fanciful conceit that from this finger a nerve went direct to the heart.