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TRAITS.
SIlISSION FBOM
TO SON.
i: *jr,
Franklin relates in, his autobiogra
phy, tlwt old aa-
x
aired him that pit -Wq #urc and
constitution tob-Id completely those
of his Aincle’s whose death occurred
four years before Franklin’s birth,
that if those two events had coincided
they might have passed for a case of
J . P A - «»..<,]!'. i V
U'Hii-tiiiM Vi-V 1 'Ui solus.
sulkinglikeness existed
xvii ciJuSlil
between two
hundred years old. To inspire Louis
thq Fourteenth with the flattering
hope of living as long, he was made,
two 'years previously, to present that
monarch with a bouquet on St. Louis’
day. His father had lived one hun
dred and thirteen years, his grand
father one hundred and twelve. Jean
Burlington, a farmer in the euvirons
of Berghem, lived to be one hundred
and sixty. The day before his death,
complete possession of his mental
taCultlcb. he divided his property
among his children ; the eldest was
brotfacicy ifhiisiiK . uud Ourbrusk, the j one hundred and three, and what is
<£k -FeiMan prince who warkuled j still more*extraordinary, the youngest
in’lMS in the Russian service. They
could hardly be distinguished from
each other. * Khasak,the elder bvthree
years, usually resided it 8t. Peters
burg, but often traveled. All Paris
knew Ourbrusk, who was constantly to
be seen at the libraries, and especially
at every first performance at the
lyrical theatres. To complete this re
semblance they both died recently at
the age of eighty-two. In spite of
certain alterations the typical features
peculiar to the houses of Guise and
Lorraine were transmitted to all their
descendants through a long scries of
generations. The Bourbon coun
tenance, the Condes aquiline nose, the
thick and protruding lower lip be
queathed to the house of Austria by a
Polish princess, are well-known in
stances. We have only to look at a
coin of George tho Third’s day to be
reminded of the present royal family.
During Addison’s short ministry Mrs.
Clarke, who solicited his favor, had
been requested to bring with her the
papers proving that she was Milton’s
daughter. But as soon as she entered
his cabinet Addison said, “Madam-, I
require no further evidence. Your
resemblance to your illustrious father
is the best of all.’’
The Comte dc Pont, who died in
1867 at nearly a hundred, told Dr.
Froissac that during the Restoration
he often met in the salons of M. Des-
mousseaux dc Givrc, prefect of Arras,
a man at whose approach he shuddered
as he would at the sight of an appar
ition, so wonderfully was he like Ro
bespierre. M. De Pont confided his
impressions to the perfect, who told
him, smiling at his prejudice, that thq
person in question passed for Iioltes-
pierre’s natural son; that in fact it was
a matter of notoriety. Next to family
likeness vitality or the duration of life
was only nine. Jean Golembiewski,
(the oldest man in the French army,
if still alive), who accompanied King
Stanislas Leczinskt; into France, be
longed to a family of centenarians.
His father lived to lie one hundred
and twenty-one, his grandmother one
hundred and thirty.
Crumbs.
Great talkers don’t frighten me
Is the listeners that I am afraid of.
The history of mankind proves that
while they can rise at times far alxivc
the brutes, they can sink at other times
far below them
About as mean a position as any
man can put himself into, is to work
all th^ time for the devil, and look all
the time to the Lord for his pay.
Honesty first, next to that comes
wisdom, after that politeness.
There is no man can tell what he
can do until he has tried; and there
arc a good many who can’t tell even
after they have tried.
Surfeit has ruined more people than
starvation has.
The safest place in any ladder is
alioiit half way up.
I have known men so stubborn that
it was just about as hard work to con
vince them that they were right as it
I was that they were wrong.
The man whose only ambition is to
make folks laugh will never get above
the reputation of being a first-class
monkey.
It is easy to mistake laziness for
patience—laziness is the cheapest kind
of patience.
.There are no weeds that wilt
quick as a widow’s.
Heroes are scarce, hut the man who
can make poverty respectable Is one of
them. „
Mankind love to lie cheated, blit
is the most important character trans
mitted bv inheritance. The two they " ant done by an artist,
daughters of Victor Amadeus the Sec- You,, S miin - « ont for S et that the
find, the Duchess of Burgundy and I " orl<i nre a11 watching you, nnd most
her sister Marie Louise, married to I °i them are more ready to charge
Phillip Fifth, both remarkable fo r j vour account with something had than
their beauty, died at twenty-six. I something good.
In the Turgot family fifty years was
the usual limit of life. The great
minister, on the approach of that term,
although in good health, remarked
that it was time to put his affairs in
order; and lie died, in fact, at fiftv-
three. In the house of Romanoff, the
duration of life is short, indejiendeiit
of the fact that several of its members
met with violent deaths. The head
of this illustrious race, Michael Feder-
ovitch, died at forty-nine; Peter the
Great was scarcely fifty-three. The
Empress Aline died at forty-seven ;
the tender-hearted Elizalieth at fifty-
Of Paul’s four sons, Alexander
•tied at forty-eight, Constantine at
forty two, Nicholas at fifty-nine, ain’t
the tlrand Duke Michse! fifiy-mw-.
hi «be bouses ot riaxony and Pru^m,
on the contrary, examples of longevity
are far from’ rare. Frederick the
Great, in spite of his continual wars
and his frequent excesses at table, was
seventy-four; Frederick William the
Third was sevonfy ; the Emperor Wil
liam, in his seventh-ninth year, is st.ll
hale and hearty. In all the countries
in Europe families of octogenarians,
nonogenumns and centenarians may
be cited. Qn the 1st of April, 171H,
there died in Paris a saddler of Doule- 1
joe, more than a
There seems to lie two kinds of ab
sence of mind—one is the result of too
much thought, and the other of no
thought at all.
The man who knows that he is a
fool is not very far from being a wise
man.
Confidence is the weakness of youth,
and distrust is the weakness of age.
The censure of our enemies is often
more honest than the commendations
of our friends.
An old gray-headed fop always im
presses me with the same feelings that
a gaudy funeral does.
The man who has no desires to
please others won’t amount to much in
this world.
| I never knew a man to brag of his
! money or his pedigree who had any
thing else io brag of.
Truth never grows old nor musty;
it is not only eternal hut perennial.
Most jieople argue not so much as
though they was trying to convince
others as to convince themselves.
“There is a time for all things,” and
the best time to hold your tongue is
when you haven’t got anything to say.
—Jodi Iii/lings.
Remember the poor. There! Thank
Heaven we’ve done our dutv.
German Babies.
A German baby is a piteous object.
It is pinioned and bound up like a
mummy, in yards of bandages, which
are unfolded once (at the outside
twice) a day. It Is never “ bathed,”
but I suppose is sometimes washed
after some occult manner. < Its head
is never touched with soap and water
until it is eight or ten months old,
when the thick skull-cap of incrusted
dirt that has by that time obtained Is
removed by the application of various
unguents. Many ladies have assured me
that the fine heads of hair one sees in
Germany arc entirely owing to the un
savory skull-cap. When having some
juveniles staying with me, I insisted on
their being “ tubbed,” all my female
friends were shocked at my ignorance
and willfulness, and assured me that it
was entirely owing to our barbaric bath
system that the king of Hanover had
lost his sight. ‘ My friends, we
are not all blind,” I said, and they were
silenced, if not convinced. To this
terrible system of bandaging and car
rying the child in a particular fashion
wrapped in a mantle that is partly
slung around the hips of the bearer,
somethingaftcr the .fashion prevailing
among Indian squaws, may be attrib
uted in a great degree the number
of curved spines, crooked shoulders,
and abnormal developments we meet in
Germany. Yet strange to say, “rick
ets”—a disease only known with us
amongst the poor, who cannot afford
the time themselves or pay others to
nurse their chiidred properly—goes by
the name of the Englischc Rrankheit,
The baby being horn ami swathed up,
now gets a huge peasant girl in loco
parentis. A mummy is not a thing fo
fondle, nor is a little bundle of human
ity (which you might stand up on end
in one corner of the room without
detriment to its sumptuary arrange
ments) an object on which to lavish
caresses. Thus the young mother is
scarcely a mother at all, the maternal
functions being delegated to another.
The hahv does not lie on the floor or
crawl to the hearth-rug, crowing and'
kicking, and curling its pink toes,
tramping with its chubby legs, and
fighting with its mottlcc# arms, “as
one that beattpi the air.” Bt does not
swarm up and about its mother’s neck
and bosom, finding its little life and all
its tinv pleasure in her arms; it does
not fall at length into a slumber of
rosy repletion, and with its mouth
open, snoozilv satisfied, rejoice its
mother’s eyes for the beautiful little
animal that it is. No, it is out walk
ing, tied to a feather hod and accom
panied bv a tall soldier, the father of
its poor iittle foster-brother or sister,
which i< to grow up as it can. It
comes in presently and is taken to its
mamma to kiss; but its real mother,
the mother that fosters and feeds it,
soon carries it away again, and resumes
all the privileges of true maternity for
the rest of the day. The lady might
as well be its aunt. “Only that and
nothing more.”—Frazer'a Magazine.
tingling which always follows the
sharp zip of the rifle bullet. The pe
culiar cutting of the air made by half
a dozen of these at once Is apt to give
the soldier the idea that the whole air
is filled with them, and that he Is cer
tain to be struck by one of them.
All, I believe, will agree as to the sen
sation first caused by the impact of a
bullet. It is a stunning, numbing
feeling, which for, a long time over
powers the local pain of the wound,
in my experience, a single buckshot
near the hip knocked rue flat, and for
two days after gave me such acute
jKtiu* and 'such muscular disturbance
from knee to shoulder that. I could not
stand erect. Soldiers have frequently
Iieen-prostrated by spent balls. A cu
rious effect of shell wounds is that
they do not bleed; the hot fragment
sears the torn blood vessels and stops
the effusion. A Miuie hall extracted
from the human body presents a re
markable sight. I have seen them
where the resistance of the flesh had
turned hack the pointed end on all
sides with such regularity that the
ball resembles a saucer or a flower.
Nitro-Glycerine Explosives.
They are carried in the holds of
steamships, carted through our streets,
and stored in buildings which give no
hint to the public of their treacherous
contents. No man can tell at what
moment he may find himself in the
immediate neighborhood of nitro
glycerine, which, if it explodes, wilt
blow him into microscopic fragments.
It was uot a great while ago that three
small boys in the ueighlxirhood of
Yonkers found several cans neatly
piled together in an open field, and
surrounded by a fence. Naturally
they stood at a distance and threw
stones at the heap, as it is the nature
of the small boy to do. The cans con
tinued nitro-glycerine, and its explo
sion suddenly made the small boy
vanish from the face of the earth.
Only the other day, the captain of a
ship arrived at Melbourne found that
he had brought with him from Eng
land forty eases of dynamite, which
had been shipped under the delusive
name of lard, or some other equally
explosive article. If we are exposed
to such dangers now, what will he our
condition a fewyeais hence, when the
manufacture and sale of these terrible
explosives will lie tenfold as great as
at presentV Baggage porters will
handle trunks with fear and trembling,
and rural politicians will no longer
venture to sit on the unopened boxes
of local grocers, lest alleged soap and
pretended raisins should happen to lie
dynamite or dualin, and should resent
the jar of swinging boot-heels or the
investigations of idle jack-knives.—
Nem York• Times.
Experiences in Battle.
I believe, writes a veteran, no two
good soldiers will widely disagree as to
their sensations during- a battle. I
take it to be a piece of bravado in any
man to assert that he Imd no fear
during the progress of a long and se
vere f>njrngr>mf>nt \ hsitflo u n ver
itable hell upon earth; not io be in
serious apprehension while it lasts is
to be either drunk, crazy, or insen
sible. The highest type of bravery is
that of the man who realizes the full
ext nt of the peril, but sticks reso
lutely to his duty. It was my ex-
perienee, and tlmt of all those about
me, repeated a dozen times, that shell
firing is not ordinarily nearly so de
moralizing as that of musketry. It is
not often that shells are thrown so that
their fragments scatter death and
The Police of London.
•John Paul, in a letter to the New
York Tribune, compares the Loudon
police with those of New York as fol
lows : The policemen, let me remark,
are rather a heavy set of fellows, slow,
if not stupid, but I like them. They
are civil to you, and seem to under
stand that they are put on dutv to be
of service to the public. They are
less ready with their clubs, too,' than
our policemen, and carry them most
of the time out of sight, instead of
swinging conveniently at the wrist,
ready to crack a skull with. For a
London policeman to draw his club Is
dangerous, and to use it to the injury
of a citizen were a still more serious
matter; he would have to prove that
the provocation was sufficient. Not
here is a “cop” allowed to add the
office of a judge, jury, and executioner
to the single function with which law
invests him. Were a London police
man to club a drunken rann, as I have
repeatedly seen done in Now York,
wounds, and their loud humming his own head would be knocked in by
overhead does not cause that nervous ' the by-tandem. 3
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