The North Star (Rochester)/1847/12/03/Miscellaneous
MISCELLANEOUS.
Novel-reading Monomaniacs.—It is a pity that the trashy literature of the day should find readers within the walls of a college; yet it is thus that some spend too much of their valuable time. As an instance of this, I am going to repeat here a great story. A graduate of Harvard told me that, during his college life, he read three thousand volumes of fiction. "Three thousand!" you exclaim; "impossible! he must have said three hundred." Three thousand, he assured me; and his veracity, is unquestionable. Nor did the evident regret with which he spoke of it admit of any motive to exaggerate. But let us see if it be, possible, and if it be, the well known mania, of novel-reading, in some persons, makes it probable. In four years, including one leap-year, there are 1461 days; he had then, to read but two volumes and a fraction daily, Sundays included. Rising early, and reading far into the night, he was able to do this. He used, he said, to run into Boston on his feet, every evening during twilight, to the book shops and circulating libraries, to return volumes and obtain others. I had thought this an unparalleled instance in the history of novel-reading—as among students I hope it is. But happening to speak of it to a friend, he mentioned the following: Being with two gentlemen at a book store in New York, at which was kept a circulating library, one of them remarked that an acquaintance of his was accustomed to read two hundred volumes of novels in a year. The other thought it incredible. The first, turning to the bookseller, asked what was the largest number of volumes drawn by one person from his library, in a year. Referring to his books he found that a certain lady had taken four hundred and fifty sets, mostly two-volumed, making about nine hundred volumes. This would amount, in four years, to 3600; so that the fair one beat the collegian by six hundred.—Recollections of College Life.
New York Canals.—Receipts from tolls on all the canals of New York since the commencement of navigation to the 7th of November, $3,352,451. Same time last year, $2,483,541.
Magnetic Telegraph.—The Agent of the Magnetic Telegraph Company, in a letter to the editor of the Mobile (Ala.) Register, states that the telegraph line between N. Orleans and Washing. will be in operation by the first of January next. It is about 1300 miles long, and much of it passes through a real wilderness —over rivers, straits and swamps.
Keep a Secret.—Anything revealed in confidence should be kept secret. There is no greater breach of good manners and Christian faith, than to reveal that which has been placed in the secrecy of your own bosom. What if the friend who once trusted you and told you the secrets of his heart, has become your enemy? You are still bound to keep your word inviolate, and preserve locked in your heart the secrets confidentially made known to you. A man of principle will never betray even an enemy. He holds it a Christian duty never to reveal what was placed in his keeping. While the Albanians were at war with Philip, King of Macedon, they intercepted a letter that the king had written to his wife, Olympia. It was returned unopened, that it might not be read in public—their laws forbidding them to reveal a secret.
Among the Egyptians, it was a criminal offence to divulge a secret. A priest who had been found guilty of this offence, was ordered to leave the country.
Have you a secret reposed in your bosoms? Reveal is not for the world. A confiding friend may tell you a hundred things, which if whispered abroad, would bring him into ridicule, and injure his character through life. No one is so upright that he may not have committed, some ungentlemanly act, or some impure offence, which may have secretly been confided to another. The fault may have been perpetrated years ago, before the individual's character was formed, and before he had a wife and children. Would it not be a profanotion of the most social duties, in a fit of anger, or out of malice or revenge, to divulge a secret like this?
A man's enemies would not care whether it was the fault of his thoughtless youth or his maturer years, so long as they could make a handle of it to his injury, and thus effect their purpose. Be careful then never under any consideration whatever, to repeat what has been whispered to you in the confidence of friendship. A betrayer of secrets is fit only for the society of the low and the vile. D. C. C.
Cure for Consumption..—An officer in the British service, resident in the East Indies, had been stricken with the fatal disease, and was reduced by it to nearly a skeleton; his friends looked upon him as a doomed man. and he himself had given up all hopes of long continuance of life. He was one morning crawling about his grounds, and accidentally went into a shed where a man had been bottling some wine, and at the moment of his master's entrance had just melted some rosin to seal the corks with. It could not be otherwise than that those within the room should inhale the smoke arising from the rosin. To the surprise of the afflicted one, his respiration became free and unobstructed, and it instantly occurred to him that the relief he experienced was produced by his having inhaled the rosinous smoke. He remained better during the day, and without consulting his doctor, repeated the experiment in his sleeping room. That night he slept soundly—a blessing he had not known for years.
Twice a day, for a week, did he continue his experiment, and with increased success. He then mentioned the affair to his medical adviser, who was equally surprised with himself at the improvement of the patient's health, and advised him to continue the inhalations night and morning.
In the space of three months his cough left him, and his appetite returned. In six months his health was so improved that he contemplated returning to his native country; he delayed, however doing so, until a year had expired. Still persisting in his new found remedy, his health was completely restored, and he was once more a sound man.
Newspapers.—A newspaper can drop the same thought into a thousand minds at the same moment. A newspaper is an adviser, who does not require to be sought, but who comes to you of his own accord, and talks to you briefly every day of the common weal, without distracting your private affairs. Newspapers, therefore, become more necessary in proportion as men become more equal, and individualism more to be feared. To suppose that they only serve to protect freedom, would be to diminish their importance: they maintain civilization.—De Tocqueville.
Eloquence.—The best style, as Coleridge has remarked, is that which forces us to think of the subject, without paying attention to the particular phrases in which it is clothed. The true excellency of style is to make us feel that words are absorbed in things, and to leave upon the mind a strong impression of the sense and the tenor of the reasoning, rather than a broken and piecemeal recollection of particular expressions and images; the result, on the contrary, if not the intention, of too much pulpit oratory, is to fill the ear with a multitude of grand terms, and bewilder the fancy with a crowd of tropes, while it is comparatively ineffectual in stamping the general argument or exhortation upon the understanding.—British Critic.
Men can be good to all.—I never yet knew any man so bad, but some have thought him honest, and afforded him love; nor ever any so good, but some have thought him evil, and hated him. Few are so stigmatical as that they are not honest to some; and few, again, are so just as that they seem not to some unequal: either the ignorance, the envy, or the partiality of those that judge, do constitute a various man. Nor can a man in himself always appear alike to all. In some, nature hath invested a disparity; in some, report hath foreblinded judgment; and in in some, accident is the cause of disposing to love or hate. Or, if not these, the variation of the bodies' humors; or, perhaps, not any of these. The soul is often led by secret motions, and loves she knows not why. There are impulsive privacies which urge us to a liking, even against the parliamental acts of the two Houses, reason, and the common sense; as if there were some hidden beauty, of a more magnetic force than all that the eye can see; and this, too, more powerful at one time than another. Undiscovered influences please us now with what we would sometimes contemn. I have come to the same man that hath now welcomed me with a free expression of love and courtesy, and another time hath left me unsaluted at all; yet, knowing him well, I have been certain of his sound affection; and have found this, not an intended neglect, but an indisposedness, or a mind seriously bruised within. Occasion reins the motions of the stirring mind. Like men that walk in their sleep, we are led about, we neither know whither nor how.
A timid man can never become great; if he possesses talent he cannot apply it; he is trampled upon by the envious and awed by the swaggering; he is thrust from the direct path which leads to honor and fame by every aspirant who possesses more spirit than himself.
A Study from Nature.—The beautiful statue of the "Greek Slave," by Mr. Powers, has excited such universal admiration, that a companion to it, we understand, will be shortly exhibited by the same artist, under the title of "The American Slave." It is the figure of a negro, with his hands fastened with a chain, on the manacles of which is cut the American Eagle. Round his back is wrapped the national flag, on which the stripes are conspicuously displayed. The crouching attitude of the figure is moot wonderfully depicted, but the statue is most to be admired for its powerful truth and unaffected simplicity. We have been assured by gentlemen who have had opportunities of judging by frequent visits to the Land of Liberty, that they have never seen anything an wonderfully true to nature.—Punch.
Equal Suffrage in Connecticut.—The proposition to abolish the distinction between colored people and whites in aspect to the right of suffrage, was rejected by the people of Connecticut. As far as heard from, the votes stand: For the proposition—5,248. Against it—6884.
The next Congress.—From a statement of the names of the members elect of the next Congress in the Journal of Commerce, it appears that the House will contain ond hundred and ten democrats and one hundred and eighteen whigs. The Senate will contain a democratic majority of fourteen.
The License Question in Vermont.—The Vermont Legislature has settled the license question, by the dismissal, 91 to 88, of a bill intended to repeal the laws of last year, allowing the people to decide by a popular vote whether the traffic in liquor shall be permitted in the State.
The packet ship Wellington, which sailed from New York on Wednesday for London, had about $100,000 on board, and the Havre packet took out a considerable amount.
John Quincy Adams visited the Park Theatre last evening, and was greeted in the most enthousiastic manner by the crowded house. The venerable patriot made his appearance just as the curtain had fallen on the first act of 'La Somnambula.' He was immediately recognized by several gentlemen in the pit. The honored name passed in an instant over the house, and inspired by one common impulse, the auditory burst into three cordial shouts of welcome. The 'old man eloquent' bowed his acknowledgements, and another cheer shook the walls of the Theatre. It was altogether one of the most unaffected, sincere and thrilling exhibitions of patriotic feeling that we ever witnessed. It was no expression of heated partisanship, but the spontaneous manifestation of popular love and reverence for one of the purest of American statesmen.—N. Y. Tribune.
Depopulation of Virginia.—The Parkersburg Gazette informs us that upwards of seventy emigrants, a few days ago, passed through that town, from the Valley of Virginia, on their way, with a large number of slaves, to Missouri, and the remainder to Iowa. Thus says the Gazette, is Virginia peopling other States, when she ought to hold her own, and attract immigration from abroad.
The Norfolk Herald, in view of this depopulation, invites emigrants from the North and East to fill up the places of the slaveholders, over whose departure it rejoices, and anticipates the day as a happy one when they shall all be gone.
Marriage.—The intervention of a priest or other ecclesiastical functionary, was not deemed indispensable to a marriage, until the Council of Trent, 1409. The celebrated decree passed in that session, interdicting any marriage otherwise than in the presence of a priest, and, at least, two witnesses. But before the time of Pope Innocent III, (1818,) there was no solemnization of marriage in the church, but the bridegroom came to the bride's house and led her home to his own, which was all the ceremony then used. Banns were first directed to be published by Canon Walter, in the year 1100.—Cleveland Herald.
The Kissing Beggar..—Among the beggars who now frequent the principal hotels in New York, is a little girl who obtains a living by kissing. She entered Rathbun's Hotel, and stepping up to a number of gentlemen, bent down and kissed their hands, and then, with a beautiful smile playing over her countenance, she held forth her own hand to receive the expected reward. She could not have been over five years of age, and must have departed with a good supply of pennies.
Glass Pens.—Wonders will never cease.—Glass is now made into all sorts of things.—There is cloth manufactured in England of glass, and it has even been used as the mainspring of a chronometer, and answered well for such a purpose. But for a pen to be made of glass, who would have believed it! Yet it is so, and most excellent writing pens they are. It is well known that with a flux of lead in combination with the silicon, in right proportions, glass can be made very ductile. These pens are now becoming not uncommon, and they are perfectly anti-corrosive by the most impure ink.—Scientific American.
Cap Paper.—This term, an abbreviation of foolscap, is derived from the water mark introduced upon paper by the Parliament of the Commonwealth, which was a fool's cap and bells, in mockery of the Royal arms used as a water mark by Charles I. Hence the term foolscap paper subsiding into "cap." Post paper was so called in contradistinction, because used to send by "post" or mail.—Detroit Free Press.
As good as if it were Æsop.—The Nantucket Islander says that the following story was lately told by a reformed inebriate, as an apology for much of the folly of drunkards:
"A mouse ranging about a brewery, happening to fall into a vat of beer, was in imminent danger of drowning, and appealed to a cat to help him out. The cat replied, 'it is indeed a very foolish request, for as soon as I get you out, I shall eat you.' The mouse piteously replied, 'that fate would be better than to be drowned in beer.' The cat lifted him out, but the fumes of the beer caused puss to sneeze; and the mouse took refuge in his hole. The cat called upon the mouse to come out—'you sir, did you not promise that I should eat you?' 'Ah!' replied the mouse, but you know I was in liquor at the time!'
Beauties of Lynch Law.—Some citizens of Montioke, Iowa, who were lately about to lynch some poor fellows for the murder of a man, were peculiarly fortunate in not carrying their unlawful purpose into execution. It turns out that the fellow supposed to have been murdered, had enlisted in the U. S. Army, and was at the Jefferson barracks; and it was only his resorting to a despicable trick—staining a hatchet &c. through revenge—that any one at all was accused of the murder.
Hope On.—Hope on, frail mortal! What though thy path be rugged, and strawed with thorns—thou hast only to persevere, and thy reward awaits thee. Many days and nights, perhaps years, hast thou struggled with adversity.
What though thou art poor, despised by these, it may be, who are thy inferiors in all save wealth! What matters it that thy short life is exposed to the rude blasts of adverse fortune, if at last thou art crowned with immortality, which those who rudely push thee from them think not of. Hope on then in thy poverty—be honest in thy humility—aspire to be truly great by being truly good.
Exercise.—Throughout all nature, want of motion indicates weakness, corruption, inanimation awl death. Trenck, in his damp prison, leaped about like a lion, in him fetters of seventy pounds weight, in order to preserve his health; and an illustrious physician observes: "I know not which is most necessary for the support of the human frame—food or motion. Were the exercises of the body attended to in a corresponding degree with that of the mind, men of learning would be more healthy and vigorous—of more general talents—of more ample practical knowledge; more happy in their domestic lives; more enterprising and attached to their duties as men. In fine, with propriety it may be said that the highest refinement of the mind, without improvement of the body, can never present anything more than half a human being."
Printing.—Cincinnati has a larger power press printing office than can be found in Boston. One establishment has nine of Adams' power presses running, four of them with all the late improvements, and all propelled by water power.
East India Cotton.—The export of cotton from Bombay to Great Britain, in each of the past years, was as follows:—1845, 80,376 bales; 1846, 42,772 bales; 1847, 151,786 bales.