“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