VARIETIES.
A Good Offer.
“I will save you a thousand pounds,” said an Irishman to an old gentleman, “if you don’t stand in your own light.”
“How?”
“You have a daughter, and you intend to give her ten thousand as a marriage portion.”
“I do.”
“Sir, I will take her with nine thousand.”
In Solitude.—Those beings only are fit for solitude who like nobody, are like nobody, and are liked by nobody.—Zimmerman.
In Lasting Remembrance.—Write your name with kindness, love, and mercy on the hearts of the people you come in contact with year by year, and you will never be forgotten.
A Curiosity in Words.—The five vowels appear in alphabetical order in “abstemious,” also in the word “facetious,” and “abstemiously” and “facetiously” give us they.
Looking Ahead.—When we meet with the little vexatious incidents of life, by which our quiet is too often disturbed, it will prevent many painful sensations if we only consider—How insignificant this will appear a twelvemonth hence.
How to be Learned.—A Persian philosopher being asked by what method he had acquired so much knowledge, answered, “By not being prevented by shame from asking questions when I was ignorant.”
Liberty.
’Tis liberty alone that gives the flowerOf fleeting life its lustre and perfume.Cowper.
’Tis liberty alone that gives the flowerOf fleeting life its lustre and perfume.Cowper.
’Tis liberty alone that gives the flowerOf fleeting life its lustre and perfume.
’Tis liberty alone that gives the flower
Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume.
Cowper.
Cowper.
Widespread Sorrow.
Man’s inhumanity to manMakes countless thousands mourn.—Burns.
Man’s inhumanity to manMakes countless thousands mourn.—Burns.
Man’s inhumanity to manMakes countless thousands mourn.
Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn.
—Burns.
—Burns.
Jealousy.
Trifles light as airAre to the jealous confirmation strongAs proofs of holy writ.—Shakespeare.
Trifles light as airAre to the jealous confirmation strongAs proofs of holy writ.—Shakespeare.
Trifles light as airAre to the jealous confirmation strongAs proofs of holy writ.—Shakespeare.
Trifles light as air
Are to the jealous confirmation strong
As proofs of holy writ.—Shakespeare.
A Bargain Hunter.—It is told of a gentleman that he had a passion for the purchase of second-hand furniture at auctions, and that in making “good bargains” he had filled his house with antiquated and almost useless articles. Upon one occasion, his wife took the responsibility, without consulting or apprising her husband, to have a portion of the least useful removed to an auction-room. Great was her dismay when, on the evening of the day of sale, the majority of the articles came back to the house. The husband had stumbled into the auction-room, and, not knowing his own furniture, had purchased it at better bargains than at first.
Constant Companions.—Hypocrisy and cunning travel together, and they cannot get very far separately.
Advice to a Wife.—Try to make home necessary to a man’s happiness, and you will almost always succeed.
Echoes.
How sweet the answer Echo makesTo Music at night,When, roused by lute or horn, she wakes,And far away o’er lawns and lakesGoes answering light!Yet Love hath echoes truer far,And far more sweet,Than e’er, beneath the moonlight’s star,Of horn, or lute, or soft guitar,The songs repeat.’Tis when the sigh, in youth sincere,And only then—The sigh that’s breathed for one to hear—Is by that one, that only Dear,Breathed back again.—Thomas Moore.
How sweet the answer Echo makesTo Music at night,When, roused by lute or horn, she wakes,And far away o’er lawns and lakesGoes answering light!Yet Love hath echoes truer far,And far more sweet,Than e’er, beneath the moonlight’s star,Of horn, or lute, or soft guitar,The songs repeat.’Tis when the sigh, in youth sincere,And only then—The sigh that’s breathed for one to hear—Is by that one, that only Dear,Breathed back again.—Thomas Moore.
How sweet the answer Echo makesTo Music at night,When, roused by lute or horn, she wakes,And far away o’er lawns and lakesGoes answering light!
How sweet the answer Echo makes
To Music at night,
When, roused by lute or horn, she wakes,
And far away o’er lawns and lakes
Goes answering light!
Yet Love hath echoes truer far,And far more sweet,Than e’er, beneath the moonlight’s star,Of horn, or lute, or soft guitar,The songs repeat.
Yet Love hath echoes truer far,
And far more sweet,
Than e’er, beneath the moonlight’s star,
Of horn, or lute, or soft guitar,
The songs repeat.
’Tis when the sigh, in youth sincere,And only then—The sigh that’s breathed for one to hear—Is by that one, that only Dear,Breathed back again.
’Tis when the sigh, in youth sincere,
And only then—
The sigh that’s breathed for one to hear—
Is by that one, that only Dear,
Breathed back again.
—Thomas Moore.
—Thomas Moore.
The Education of Woman.—Education is not that which smothers a woman with accomplishments, but that which tends to consolidate a firm and regular character—to form a friend, a companion, and a wife.—Hannah More.
On a Summer Holiday.—After shutting up her house for some time, a woman used a weak tincture of iodine to stain herself and her children brown, and then succeeded in convincing all the neighbours that she had been to the sea-side.
Truth.—Truth comes home to the mind so naturally, that when we learn it for the first time it seems as though we did no more than recall it to our memory.—Fontenelle.
An Infirm Tribunal.[2]
The fact has been mentioned above of Camille Desmoulins’ stutter, which indomitable perseverance and enthusiasm in his chosen cause so far threw into the shade as that it proved no drawback to his attainment of a pre-eminent position in those troublous times.
It must be acknowledged as a somewhat singular circumstance that another of the revolutionary chiefs suffered from an affliction that would appear a still more certain impediment to success in public life. Couthon, while yet an obscure provincial advocate in Auvergne, was stricken with paralysis, which deprived him of the use of his limbs. Yet Couthon, thus laid past, as it might seem, once and for all, on life’s most obscure and dismal shelf—Couthon was no longer in Auvergne, but in Paris, in the forefront of the fiercest turmoil! Couthon, the paralytic, formed the third of the famous Triumvirate which exercised for above a year—an age in revolutionary times—the Dictatorship of France.
It is another rather curious fact about this man that, in spite of his grievous infirmity, he is represented as a person of engaging aspect and noble presence. When any measures of peculiar severity were to be proposed, he was always chosen by the committee to bring them forward, and he was remarkable for uttering the most atrocious and pitiless sentiments in a tone and with a manner the most affectionate and tender. The details of those wholesale murders, the Fournées, or Batches, as they were grimly termed, which marked the last and most sanguinary month of the Reign of Terror, were left to the unflinching hands of this pitiless, soft-seeming Couthon, and the suspicious, ferocious St. Just.
Proud and Ungrateful.—Never was any person remarkably ungrateful who was not also insufferably proud, nor anyone proud who was not equally ungrateful.
The Way of the World.—When two people disagree, each person tells her own story as much to the disadvantage of the other as she possibly can. The rule of the world on these occasions is to believe much of the evil which each says of the other, and very little of the good which each says of herself. Both, therefore, suffer.
Mothers-in-Law.—“Yes,” said a mother-in-law, “you can deceive your guileless little wife, young man, but her father’s wife—never!”
The Obedient Husband.
A clergyman, travelling through the village of Kettle, in Fifeshire, was called into an inn to officiate at a marriage, instead of the parish minister, who, from some accident, was unable to attend, and had caused the company to wait for a considerable time.
While the reverend gentleman was pronouncing the admonition, and just as he had told the bridegroom to love and honour his wife, the said bridegroom interjected the words, “and obey,” which he thought had been omitted from oversight, though that is part of the rule laid down solely to the wife. The minister, surprised to find a husband willing to be henpecked by anticipation, did not take advantage of the proposed amendment; on which the bridegroom again reminded him of the omission. “Ay, and obey, sir—love, honour, and obey, ye ken!” and he seemed seriously discomposed at finding that his hint was not taken.
Some years after the same clergyman was riding through the village, when the same man came out and stopped him, addressing him in the following remarkable words: “D’ye mind, sir, yon day, when ye married me, and when I wad insist upon vowing to obey my wife? Weel, ye may now see that I was in the richt. Whether ye wad or no, I hae obeyed my wife; and behold, I am now the only man that has a twa-storey house in the hale toun!”
A Natural Explanation.—The greater longevity of women as compared with men appears to be well borne out by the statistics of every country that has yet been examined. This shows that, after all, it is not bright dresses, heavy skirts, and thin shoes that kill. It is the paying for them that does it.
Musical Performers.—“Three things,” said Mozart, “are necessary for a good performer”; and he pointed significantly to his head, to his heart, and to the tips of his fingers, as symbolical of understanding, sympathy, and technical readiness.
Encouragement.
The maid whose manners are retired,Who, patient, waits to be admired,Though overlooked, perhaps, awhileHer modest worth, her modest smile,Oh, she will find, or soon or late,A noble, fond, and faithful mate.
The maid whose manners are retired,Who, patient, waits to be admired,Though overlooked, perhaps, awhileHer modest worth, her modest smile,Oh, she will find, or soon or late,A noble, fond, and faithful mate.
The maid whose manners are retired,Who, patient, waits to be admired,Though overlooked, perhaps, awhileHer modest worth, her modest smile,Oh, she will find, or soon or late,A noble, fond, and faithful mate.
The maid whose manners are retired,
Who, patient, waits to be admired,
Though overlooked, perhaps, awhile
Her modest worth, her modest smile,
Oh, she will find, or soon or late,
A noble, fond, and faithful mate.
A Comforting Thought.—When any calamity has been suffered, the first thing to be remembered is how much has been escaped.—Dr. Johnson.
A Gipsy Trick.
The feat known by the gipsies as “the great secret,” is performed by inducing some woman of largely magnified faith—say some decent farmer’s wife—to believe that there is hidden in the house a magic treasure, which can only be made to come to hand by depositing in the cellar another treasure, to which it will come by natural affinity or attraction.
“For gold, as you sees, my dearie, draws gold, and so if you ties up all your money in a pockethandkerchief and leaves it, you’ll find it doubled. And wasn’t there the squire’s lady, and didn’t she draw two hundred gold guineas out of the ground when they’d laid in an old grave—and only one guinea she gave me for all my trouble; and I hope you’ll do better by the poor old gipsy, my dearie.”
The gold and all the spoons are tied up—for as the enchantress observes, there may be silver, too—and she solemnly repeats over it certain magical rhymes. The next day the gipsy comes to see how the charm is working. Could anyone look under her cloak she might find another bundle precisely resembling the one containing the treasure. She looks at the precious deposit, repeats her rhyme again and departs, after carefully charging the housewife that the bundle must not be touched or spoken about for three weeks. “Every word you tell about it, my dearie, will be a guinea gone away.” Sometimes she exacts an oath on the Bible that nothing shall be said.
Back to the farmer’s wife never again. After three weeks another extraordinary instance of gross incredulity appears in the country papers, and is perhaps repeated in a colossal London daily, with a reference to the absence of the schoolmaster. There is wailing and shame in the house—perhaps great suffering, for it may be that the savings of years have been swept away. The charm has worked.—Leland.
The Pleasure of Giving.—She who gives for the sake of thanks knows not the pleasure of giving.
A Paradox.
Bread is the staff of life, they say;And be it also spoken,It won’t support a man a dayUnless it first be broken.
Bread is the staff of life, they say;And be it also spoken,It won’t support a man a dayUnless it first be broken.
Bread is the staff of life, they say;And be it also spoken,It won’t support a man a dayUnless it first be broken.
Bread is the staff of life, they say;
And be it also spoken,
It won’t support a man a day
Unless it first be broken.
Slaves to Pleasure.
The world’s a bubble; all the pleasures in it,Like morning vapours, vanish in a minute,The vapours vanish, and the bubble’s broke;A slave to pleasure is a slave to smoke.Francis Quarles.
The world’s a bubble; all the pleasures in it,Like morning vapours, vanish in a minute,The vapours vanish, and the bubble’s broke;A slave to pleasure is a slave to smoke.Francis Quarles.
The world’s a bubble; all the pleasures in it,Like morning vapours, vanish in a minute,The vapours vanish, and the bubble’s broke;A slave to pleasure is a slave to smoke.
The world’s a bubble; all the pleasures in it,
Like morning vapours, vanish in a minute,
The vapours vanish, and the bubble’s broke;
A slave to pleasure is a slave to smoke.
Francis Quarles.
Francis Quarles.