It was impossible not to laugh when the following circumstance was mentioned the other day in our hearing: A lady, whose little child had by accident partaken of something which it was feared would inflame or distend its bowels, was awakened in the night by the bursting of a yeast-bottle, in an adjoining closet. "Husband!" she exclaimed "get up! get up! Betsey has exploded! I heard her explode this minute!"—and nothing short of lighting a candle, and going to the apartment where the little girl slept would convince her of the unreality of her ridiculous impression.
The memories of childhood, after a mature age has been attained, are more powerful than many people are aware of. And especially is this the case, in reference to the religious observances which first arrest the attention of children. Our annual anniversaries, which bring to the Great Metropolis so many ministers of different denominations, are fruitful examples of the strong memories of children in this respect. With the familiar faces of the clergymen who ministered before him in holy things in his boyhood, come back to the city denizen fresh memories of his early life in the country; the plain village-church, with its farmer-occupants; the "tiding-men," who used to pull his ears, and make him change his seat, when he was restive under the delays and restraints of the sanctuary. "Do you see that white-haired old gentleman?" said a friend to us in the crowded Tabernacle, at a late religious anniversary, pointing to a venerable clergyman, the personification of solemn dignity. He was our minister in the country nearly forty years ago, and he was called "old Mr. L——" then. How well I remember his baptizing my little sister!—and it seemed but a dream of time, afterward, when I saw him marry her to a young man who had won her heart; and in less than two years afterward he uncovered his white head at her grave, and endeavored to speak words of consolation to her bereaved friends. The last time I heard him in the country was at a conference-meeting, on a summer afternoon, at the little school-house; and well do I recollect how, as the late twilight drew on, and I was looking out upon the deepening green of the trees that surrounded the humble building, his voice trembled with emotion as he read the parting hymn:
'The day is past and gone,
The evening shades appear;
Oh, may we all remember well,
The night of Death draws near!
'We lay our garments by,
Upon our beds to rest;
So Death will soon disrobe us all
Of what we here possessed.'
"I should like," continued our friend, as we walked away after the services were over; "I should like to go home to die, when it shall please GOD to call me away, and have that good old man, the friend and director of my boyhood, speak a few words over my last remains."
It is a pleasant thing, once in a while, to encounter a man of imperturbable good-nature; and such a one it was, who recently, at one of our hotels, after pulling some dozen of times at his bell, which continued unanswered, all at once said to a friend who was in his apartment: "I wonder if it's because I keep pulling at that bell so, that they don't come up! I'm afraid it is, really. Perhaps they're offended at me!" Even such patience is better than loud grumbling in a tavern-hall, and vociferous "bully-ragging" of servants.
Somebody—and we know not whom, for it is an old faded yellow manuscript scrap in our drawer—thus rebukes an Englishman's aspiration to be "independent of foreigners:" A French cook dresses his dinner for him, and a Swiss valet dresses him for his dinner. He hands down his lady, decked with pearls that never grew in the shell of a British oyster, and her waving plume of ostrich-feathers certainly never formed the tail of a barn-door fowl. The viands of his table are from all countries of the world; his wines are from the banks of the Rhine and the Rhone. In his conservatory he regales his sight with the blossoms of South American flowers; in his smoking-room he gratifies his scent with the weed of North America. His favorite horse is of Arabian blood; his pet dog of the St. Bernard breed. His gallery is rich with pictures from the Flemish school, and statues from Greece. For his amusement he goes to hear Italian singers warble German music, followed by a French ballet. The ermine that decorates his judges was never before on a British animal. His very mind is not English in its attainments: it is a mere pic-nic of foreign contributions. His poetry and philosophy are from ancient Greece and Rome; his geometry from Alexandria; his arithmetic from Arabia, and his religion from Palestine. In his cradle, in his infancy, he rubbed his gums with coral from oriental oceans; and when he dies, he is buried in a coffin made from wood that grew on a foreign soil, and his monument will be sculptured in marble from the quarries of Carrara. A pretty sort of man this, to talk of being "independent of foreigners!"