Taking things too literally is a fertile cause of amusing blunders. Two costermongers claiming proprietorship of one donkey, went to the Westminster county court to get the dispute decided. After hearing a part of the evidence, the judge said they had better settle the case out of court during the adjournment for luncheon. Upon the court reopening the defendant told His Honour it was all right; the donkey was his. Turning to the plaintiff, the judge saw his personal appearance was altered for the worse; but before he could put any questions, the defendant went on to say that they had found a quiet yard to settle it in, as His Honour had suggested. He had been rather rough on the plaintiff, but couldn't help it; they had only half an hour to pull it off in, and plaintiff was a much tougher customer than he looked to be. The explanation was conclusive, if not quite satisfactory to the court, and the donkey became the prize of the victor in the fight.
'Come up to the Capitol while we are in session, and I'll give you a seat on the floor of the House,' said a member of Congress to one of his supporters, who called upon him in Washington.
'Wall, no; I thank you,' said the West Virginian; 'poor as I am, I always manage to have a cheer to sit on at home, and I ha'n't come here to sit on the floor.'
A doctor, called in for the second time just in time to save the life of a man who during fits of intoxication was given to dosing himself with laudanum, rated his patient roundly for a good-for-nothing scoundrel, who, if he really intended to kill himself, should cut his throat and have done with it. One night the doctor's bell was pulled. Putting his head out of window, he saw the self-poisoner's wife, and heard her call out: 'He has done it, doctor.' 'Done what?' asked he. 'John has taken your sensible advice,' replied the woman; 'he has cut his throat, and will save you further trouble!'
The American poet must have been either very angry or very much amused, when his note to a friend, 'Come and see me; I am at Barnum's'—meaning the hotel of that name in New York, elicited the answer: 'I am sorry you are going to exhibit yourself. If you had stuck to literature you would have made your mark and fortune. Whereabouts is the show now?' Ill-natured people might suspect the mistake was wilfully made. We should be sorry to suppose anybody capable of thinking the same respecting the extraordinary misconception under which an eminent divine laboured at a dinner-party. He was so dull and silent, that the lady next him expressed her fear that he was unwell. 'To tell the truth,' said he, 'I am not quite the thing; I have a presentiment that a serious illness is hanging over me—a peculiar numbness all down my right side seems to forebode paralysis; for I have been pinching my right leg all dinner-time, and can elicit no responsive feeling whatever; the limb seems dead.' 'If that is all,' said his fair neighbour, with a good-natured smile, 'you need not alarm yourself: the leg you have been pinching all the evening belongs to me!'—Honi soit qui mal y pense.
[A FEW FRENCH NOTES.]
Our lively neighbours, as journalists still sometimes delight to designate the practical, money-getting French of post-imperial days, have learned much in the stern school of adversity. Saddled with a weight of taxation that might crush the spirit and cripple the energies of a more robust race, they shew wonderful elasticity in developing new and unexpected sources of national wealth, and leave no stone unturned the turning of which may yield a profit.
If there was one branch of industry the revival of which seemed hopeless, it was the home manufacture of kelp, virtually driven out of the market by South American barilla. At its best the kelp trade had but helped the inhabitants of the Hebrides, the western Highlands, and other barren shores, to eke out a scanty livelihood by burning the sea-weed that the waves washed to their feet; while the preparation was primitive enough to have dated from the days of Ossian's shadowy heroes. Science, however, embodied in the form of M. Emile Moride of Nantes, has seriously taken in hand the task of utilising the heaps of wreck-weed that strew the bleak Breton coast, so as to derive the highest return for labour and capital invested. With the aid of a portable furnace, a ventilator or set of bellows for continuous blast, and two wheelbarrows, M. Moride provides for the cooking of his raw material. The furnace is built of dry stones, wrapped round in fresh wet weed, and is supplied with apertures which promote the rapid cooling of the 'sea-weed charcoal,' so called. The ventilator insures quick combustion; but the beauty of the process is that the bromium and iodine, apt, in the old-fashioned method, to be lost through over-roasting, are now preserved. There are at Noirmoutier alone two hundred of these furnaces at work, producing two million gallons of carbonised weed. Each furnace earns its annual fifteen or twenty pounds sterling, supplying as it does soda, potash, and other chemicals to the wholesale druggist, along with phosphates and salts of lime invaluable to the farmer. The pecuniary advantage over the ancient system is roughly estimated at sixty per cent.
France, which exports so enormous a number of eggs, is naturally desirous to content her chief customers, ourselves, by sending over the fragile freight in good preservation. Rubbing the shells with butter, lard, or moistened gum is the mode hitherto practised, but the grocer's stores have never quite rivalled the fresh products of the hen-yard. They may do so now, if we are careful to follow the advice of M. Durand, the Blois chemist. He coats over the shells of his new-laid eggs with silicate of soda, lays them separately to dry, being heedful that no speck of surface remains accessible to air, and consequently to decay, and stows them, for a year if required, in a cupboard. M. Sace of Neufchâtel, a Swiss chemist, not a French one, is reported to achieve as much by the help of paraffine.