“You had better take the five pounds than venture again; there’s a guager in town, and your situation is somewhat dangerous.”
“A guager in town!” cried Paddy Corbett, with well-affected surprise, “Isas Mauri! what’ll I do at all at all? now I’m a gone man all out. Take it for any thing ye like, sir dear, an’ if any throuble like this should ever come down an ye, it will be a comfort an’ a raycreation to yer heart to know that ye had a poor man’s blessing, avick deelish machree, an’ I give it to ye on the knees of my heart, as ye desarved it, an’ that it may go in yer road, an’ yer childre’s road, late an’ early, eating an’ dhrinking, lying an’ rising, buying an’ selling.”
Our story has approached its close: the tobacco was safely stowed inside, in order to be consigned to Mr Pigtail’s private receptacle for such contraband articles. Paddy had just pocketed his five pounds, and at that moment in burst Mr Prywell. The execration which ever after pursued the tobacconist for his treacherous conduct, and the heavy fine in which he was amerced, so wrought upon his health and circumstances, that in a short time he died in extreme poverty. His descendants became homeless wanderers, and it is upon record, among the brave and high-minded men of Duhallow, that Jeffrey Pigtail of Kanturk was the only betrayer that ever disgraced the barony.
E. W.
Speed on Railways.—In the first of a course of lectures on railways, delivered in the early part of last year at Manchester by Dr Lardner, he gave the following account of the speed attained by locomotive engines at different periods: “Since the great questions which had been agitated respecting the effect which an increased width of rails would have on railway transit, and the effect which very large drawing wheels, of great diameter, would have on certain railways, the question of very vastly increased speed had acquired considerable interest. Very recently two experiments had been made, attended with most surprising results. One was the case of the Monmouth express. A dispatch was carried from Twyford to London on the Great Western Railway, a distance of thirty miles, in thirty-five minutes. This distance was traversed very favourably, and being subject to less of those casual interruptions to which a longer trip would be liable, it was performed at the rate of six miles in seven minutes, or six-sevenths of a mile in one minute (very nearly fifty-one and a half miles an hour). He had experimented on speed very largely on most of the railways of the country, and he had never personally witnessed that speed. The evaporating power of those engines was enormous. Another performance, which he had ascertained since he arrived in this neighbourhood, showed that great as was the one just mentioned, they must not ascribe it to any peculiar circumstance attending the large engines and wide gauge of the Great Western Railway. An express was dispatched a short time since from Liverpool to Birmingham, and its speed was stated in the papers. One engine, with its tender, went from Liverpool, or rather from the top of the tunnel at Edge Hill, to Birmingham, in two hours and thirty-five minutes. But he had inquired into the circumstances of that trip, and it appeared that the time the engine was actually in motion, after deducting a variety of stoppages, was only one hour and fifty minutes in traversing ninety-seven miles. The feat on the Great Western was performed on a dead level, while on the Grand Junction the engine first encountered the Whiston incline, where the line rises 1 in 96 for a mile and a half; and after passing Crewe, it encountered a plane of three miles to the Madeley summit, rising 20 feet a mile, succeeded by another plane, for three miles more, rising 30 feet a mile; yet with all these impediments it performed the ninety-seven miles in one hour and fifty minutes, or 110 minutes; consequently the distance traversed in each minute was 97 divided by 110, or 52 ¹⁰⁄₁₁ths, nearly 53 miles an hour—a speed which, he confessed, if he had not evidence of it, he could scarcely have believed to be within the bounds of mechanical possibility. The engine which performed this feat had driving wheels of 5½ feet diameter; their circumference would be 17¼ feet. Taking the speed at 53 miles an hour, it was within a very minute fraction of 80 feet in a second of time. This was not the greatest speed of the engine, but the average speed spread over 97 miles and there could be little doubt that it must have exceeded sixty miles an hour during a considerable portion of the distance.”
That man should be happy, is so evidently the intention of the Creator, the contrivances to that end are so multitudinous and so striking, that the perception of the aim may be called universal. Whatever tends to make men happy, becomes a fulfilment of the will of God. Whatever tends to make them miserable, becomes opposition to his will.—Harriet Martineau.
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