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Last Words.
"Jesus.”—Ignatius Loyola.
“More light!”—Goethe.
“The artery no longer beats.”—Al
bert de Haller.
“That is right; I have now done.”—
Joseph Priestley.
"I must sleep now.”—Lord Byron.
“God’s will be done.”—Bishop Ken.
“Christ, Christ!” then after, “This
is as it should be.”—Douglas Jerrold.
“I have had enough of everything.”
—Dr. Jortin.
“Give Mr. Dagroles a chair.”—Lord
Chesterfield.
“All is well at last.”—George
Crab be.
“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be
done.”—Sir Edward Coke.
“Thank God, I have done my duty.”
—Lord Nelson.
“I have sent for you that you may
see how a Christian can die.”—Addi
son.
“Thou wilt show my head to the
people ; it is worth showing.”—George
James Danton.
“Let me hear once more those notes
so long my solace and delight.”—Mo
zart.
“Lord Jesus, receive my soul! O
Lord, save my country.”—John Hamp
den.
“We are all going to heaven, and
Vandyke i3 one of the party.”—Thos.
Gainsborough.
“Oh, my country! how I love my
country.”—William Pitt.
They were reading the Psalms to
him ; he said, “Cease now.”—John
Locke.
“it matters little how the head lies,
provided the heart is right.”—Sir
Walter Raleigh.
“These brave fellows wiil be cut up
for want of a commander.”—Colonel
James Gardiner.
“Then I shall be glad to find a hole
to.creep out of the world at.”—Thomas
Hobbes.
“Pity my beard should be cut, that
has not committed treason.”—Sir
Thomas More.
The doctor asked him, “Is your
mind at ease?” “No, it is not.”—
Oliver Goldsmith.
“If I had strength enough to hold a
pen I would write how easy and pleas-
„ »nt a thing it is to die.”—Dr. William
Hunter.
Sir Wathen Waller, who was in at
tendance on George IV., went to his
bedside and found the King agitated,
and helped to raise him from his bed.
The King exclaimed : “Watty,what is
this? It is death ! They have deceived
me.” In that situation, without a
struggle, he expired. 1830.
Very calmly, trusting in God, died
Mary of England, the wife of William
III., resigned to her death, although
so happy and brilliant had been her
life with her husband. On her death
bed, ©ften as she was asked if any
thing could be done to ease her, she
always replied : “Nothing does me so
much good as prayer.” William, who
upon her death fell into di Bpair, cried
out in his grief, “I was the happiest
man on earth, and from this time
shall be the most unhappy one. She
had no fault; no one can know how
good she was but I!” William III.
followed her in a few years, and died
as calm and resigned as she.
German Workmen.
Workmen in Germany have a hard
row to hoe, according to the report of
Consul General Vogler. He finds that
the average cost of food alone for four
persons amounts to $9.50 a week. The
highest wages are paid at Frankfort-
on-the Main, Prussia. The wages of a
buildei’s foreman at Frankfort are
$7.40 a week ; a journeyman, $5.04 ; a
hod-carrier, $3.74; a cabinet-maker,
$4.58; a locksmith, $4.85; a tailor,
$4.56; a shoemaker, $3.84. a factory
hand, $3.50; and gardeners and field
handi the same, while in Darmstadt
the field laborer only gets $1.44 per
week. It is at Nuremberg that the
general scale of wages is the smallest.
A foreman get $4.80 a week; a jour
neyman, $2.40; a hod-carrier, $1 44; a
cabinet-maker, $2 10 ; a locksmith, the
same ; a tailor $1.80; a shoemaker, the
same; a gaidener $2.16; and a field
hand $1.68. Emigration of workmen
seems to be the only solution of the
labor problem in Germany as well as
.in several other European countries.
A. jet Hack lamb was the offspring
of a sheep belonging to Robert Good
srd, of Oak Hill, Me. The mother re
fused to recognize or assist It iu any
way, hut when she subsequently gave
birth to a snow-white lamb it was
rested with extravagant afleotion.
Pleasures of the Russian Post
Office.
In Bussia, a letter may be opened in
its passage through the post office by
anybody and everybody. It is true
that acts of this Kind usually have the
will of a Minister for their authority.
It is also well known that certain
times and seasons are chosen for pry-
But It is none the less true that there
is nothing in the regulations of the
Russian post office to prevent the arbi
trary and irresponsible acts of a Minis
ter from being imitated by the post
master or his clerk. The chances of a
letter being allowed to pass without
interference are not visibly greater
than the chances of it being opened.
Nor is there much ceremony in the
process. The officials seem to dispense
with that time-honored expedient of
inquisitive lodging-house keepers—a
steaming tea-Kettle. The letter is sim
ply slit for half its length—more if
necessary —the contents removed and
examined, and ti.e envelope finally
fastened up with the gummed paper
that forms the margin of sheet postage
stamps. As there is not the slightest
necessity for concealment, there is not
the smallest attempt to disguise the
act of inquisition, and the opened
letter reaches its destination with the
evidences of its treatment written
broadly, even triumphantly, across its
face. Opened communications are
not, however, always reclosed. On
the evening of the assassination of the
late Emperor every letter passing
through the St. Petersburg post office
was opened and subsequently deliv
ered—where delivery took place—with
a gaping slit in the envelope, indicat
ing the feverish haste with which the
scrutiny had been conducted. In the
provinces, perhaps, post office officials
are less liable to panic than in the
capital, but their very distance from
the seat of government gives a precari-
ousnesB to postal communication from
which the system does not suffer in
centres like St. Petersburg and Mos
cow. In the capital there is at least
dispatch, even if accompanied by a
disagreeable form ot espionage ; in the
provinces postal traffic is beset with
much slowness and uncertainty.
Some of the postmasters have a habit
of detaining correspondence for days
at a time. From A«traghan, for ex
ample, I have just received at the
hour and moment two letters, one of
which was posted six days before the
otner. in country towns post office
servants are strongly suspected—with
what justification I know not—of de
laying and opening letters purely for
the purpose of possessing themselves
of local secrets. If the address is
written badly, and does not at once
disclose its meaning to the post office
employe, it is put aside and ultimately
consigned to the flames. In this way
many thousauds of letters are annu*
ally burnt in Russia—communications
which 1 think it safe to say would
under a better and more painstaking
system for the most part reach their
destination. It is, of course, upon
books, newspapers and printed matter
of all kinds that the Russian post
office censorship presses most heavily.
To receive The Contemporary Review
with four or five pages of an article
obliterated by a filthy stinking com
pound of oil, beeswax and printing
ink ; to have one’s Manchester Exami
ner and Times banded to one with its
first or second leading article cut
cleanly out by the censorial scissors—
are experiences which in England
could only be conceived of as the
preliminaries and provocatives of some
national agitation, but which in Rus
sia are treated, because they have to be
treated, as every day occurrences.
Not very many months ago regis
tered letters could not be received
without first passing through the
Custom House. The owner of* the
communication, after complying with
o >rtain preliminaries, designed to as
sist the authorities in his Identifica
tion, went to the Custom H ouse to
claim his letter. He was there sub
jected to an examination. If bis pa
pers and documents were satisfactory,
the letter was produced, solemnly
opened, and, finally, if found to con
tain no contraband articles, it was
banded over to the claimant. It hap
pened often enough—the Russians
have a perfect mania for the unneces
sary registration of letters—that all
the package ooutalned was a photo
graph or a pair of stockings, and to
obtain possession of those articles the
law-abiding citizen was subjected to a
delay of at least two days, a charge of
from 61. to is., and to the loss of a
whole afternoon or morning spent In
the visit to the douane, not to say
anything about the annoyance and
kns of temper involved. Even now,
since the abolition of tha Custom
House examination, the receipt of
registered letters is hampered by very
troublesome, and at the same time
very unnecessary, conditions. The
recipient is first officially notified that
there is a registered letter awaiting
him at the post office. If a stranger,
he probably hurries thither to claim
it, but only to discover his ingenuous
ness and precipitancy. It is for the
dvornik who watches over him at his
hotel or lodging-house to make the
first step. The dvornik must visit the
nearest police station, and there make
a Statutory declaration to the effect
that the. Ivan Ivanovich, residing at
such an address in such a perspective,
is the very identical Ivan Ivanovich
mentioned in the official notification,
aud no other. His declaration sol
emnly made, the chief or police of the
quarter solemnly “legalizes” the
document, and the notification having
been signed oy Ivan Ivanovich, can
then be exchanged for the registered
letter at the post office. Of course
Ivan Ivanovich cannot get his com
munication on the day of its arrival,
he must personally present himself at
the post office in order to receive it,
and he is sometimes called upon to
pay Zees of one kind or another a
value in excess of that of the contents
of the letter themselves. Nor are the
formalities which have to be com
plied with in the dispatefi of registered
letters at all less annoying or expens
ive. One of the regulations makes it
incumbent upon the sender to write
the value of the package, in coin,
notes or articles, on a form, and also
on the outside of the envelope; and
this, in some cases, must take place in
French. Hiw injuriously this ar
rangement may operate is shown by
the details of a case which have just
reached me from Moscow. In a small
village twenty miles from the old
Russian capital lives a tradesman
who is in the habit of sending small
sums of money through the post by
registered letter. He does not know
French, the post offlc9 officials of his
village are ignorant of that language,
he can get no one to assist him, and
is, therefore, obliged to travel twenty
miles to Moscow to dispatch his
packet there. The result is that the
cost of the journey is actually in ex
cess of the amount of his inclosure !
Home Economies.
Ten Minute Cake.—One-fourth of
a pound of butter, a little less than a
pound of flour, the same of sugar, six
eggs beaten separately ; flavor with
mace, or other flavoring to taste, and
bake in mufflinrings.
President's Pudding.—Cut some
slices of stale bread and dip each one
in a custard made thus: “Beat up one
egg with a wineglass full of milk and
one half ounce of powdered sugar, ’fry
the bread quickly in butter, pile on a
dish with layers of jam between the
slices, pour a thin boiled custard over
aud sift some sugar, then serve.
Queen’s Pudding -One pint of
fine sifted bread crumbs, one quart of
milk, one cup of sugar, the yelks of
four eggs, a piece of butter the size of an
egg, bake until done (but do not allow
it to become water) and spread with a
layer of jelly. Whip the whites of
the eggs to a stiff froth with five table-
spootfuls of sugar and juice of one
lemon, spread on the top and brown
lightly. This is good with or without
sauce. It is good cold, served with
rich cream.
Soups.—To make nutritious and
palatable soup, with flwors well min
gled, requires study, practice and good
taste. The best basis for soup is lean
uncooked meat, a pound of meat to a
quart of water, to which may be added
chicken, turkey, beef or mutton bones
well broken up, a mixture of beef,
mutton, and veal, with a bit of ham
bone, all cut fine, makes a higher fla
vored soup than any single meat; the
legs of all meats are rioh in gelatine,
an important constituent of soup. The
best herbs are sage, thyme, sweet
marjoram, tarragon, mint, sweet basil,
parsley, bay-leaves, cloves, mace, cel.
ery seed and onions. The bestseasoning
is that which is made up of the small
est quantity from each of many spices.
The good ?oup maker must be a skill-
lul taster.
Children’s Books.
Children’s books abound nowadays,
but I question if children are as well
off as when their libraries were scan
tier. The opportunity for choice is so
large that pareuts are commonly too
bewildered to make selections, and
end by the books the bookseller rec
ommends, or which recommends itself
by having the greatest number of pic
tures. Of illustrated books there are
now a hundred where there use! (o be
© ne.
A Siberian Landlord.
Sleeping in a Steam Cheat. An Indignant
Traveler Ssekmg Air.
Our first act was to forward our
passports to the chief of police to be
visaed. This is an imperative duty
imposed upon all Siberian travelers
when .hey arrive in a place where
they intend to stop for more than a
few hours.
The passports are delivered to the
landlord of the hotel, or the house
holder upon whom you may be billet
ed, in case hotel accommodations are
lacking, and is by him sent to the bu
reau of the chief of police. When re
turned with the proper visa, the land
lord is allowed to keep it until his
guest has settled his account, and so
the possession of a passport is not only
a protection and a permission for trav
eling, but is a guarantee that the
holder of it bas paid his bills as he
went along.
After this little preliminary had
been attended to, we were shown to a
room which was utterly guiltless of a
bed, and contained only a couple of
sofas, a dilapidated table and a num
ber of rickety chairs. On the walls
several cheap prints of departed Rus
sian rulers and Russian saints were
Hung, and in their midst a pictuie of
Washington, a decidedly incongruous
association. The room was heated to
a roasting temperature by a huge
sqyare furnace standing just outside
the door, and calculated to warm the
corridor and the half a dozm rooms
opening into it. Means of ventilation
there were none, and the air was so
close and stifling as to be almost unen
durable to us who had lived on the
pure, fresh, cold and wholesome air of
out doors for so long a time.
Wearied, however, with our long
ride, we threw ourselves down on the
sofas, first tumbling our furs, blankets
and other accoutrements into the cor
ner and dropped to sleep at once. I
did not sleep long, however, but soon
awoke with a stifling sensation across
my breast and a racking headache
that threatened, I thought, to split my
head quite open. Our furs and cloth
ing, wet through from our long ride,
had thawed out under the effect of the
beat and had been steaming and smok
ing in such a way that almost turned
our room into a first-class vapor-bath.
We could scarcely see from one side of
the room to the other for the steam,
and when I arose and endeavored to
grope my way to the door, I was so
dizzy and weak that I could scarcely
stand. Gvosdikoff was furious be
cause we had been put into such quar
ters, and swore soundly that he would
have the head of tfie witch of a land
lord who had ventured thus to treat
us. Witn a voice that thundered
through the whole house he called fer
the bell-boy, it such we can call the
man-of-all-work whose duty it was to
wait upon the guests.
“Maltchik, mallchik / ’’he shouted.
“Sey tchass (directly), was the re
sponse from below.
Directly in the dictionary of a Rus
sian servant means any time within a
week, according to his convenience.
We waited and waited, and Gvosdi
koff stormed and fumed. Still no
maltchik. Again he was called in
more stentorian tones than before.
lt Sey tchasa, sey tchass,” was again
the prompt response, but there was no
service following it.
Our misery became unendurable,
and the anger of Gvosdikoff, which
had all along been steadily rising, was
now at fever heat. Witn an oath he
seized one of the chairs and with tre
mendous force threw it at one of the
windows.
“I’ll see if we can get any fresh air,”
lie exclaimed.
With a crash that smashed the glass
into a thousand fragments, broke the
window frames to pieces, and shook
the whole room, the chair went
through on its errand of mercy. An
other chair followed its companion
into the outer world by way of the
other window, and the cold, fresh air
poured in through the openings and
quickly dissipated the dead, smother
ing atmosphere. We were enlivened
at once, and for the first time si ace
coming into the house, began to feel
comfortable and quite like ourselves.
“Now let us see if wo oau find the
maltchik or his villainous master,”
said Gvosdikoff,
We found our way down stairs, and,
turning our steps kitchenward, where
the proprietor as well as the servants
of suoh a place are most likely to be
found when not on duty elsewhere,
which really rarely happens,
opened the door leading into that
room. To our utter amazement, there
sat the landlord oomfo’-tably taking
his breakfast, with his maltchik wait
ing upon him. Ti e anger of Gvosdi-
keff was again beyond control, and
rightly so,too, 1 thought. Here was the
impudent, lazy landlord keeping the
guests of his house waiting for at least
half an hour, while the servant for
whom they had been calling had been
getting his breakfast and paying at
tention to the guests only long enough
at a time to shout “directly, directly,”
to appease.
The way in which Gvosdikoff tooK
in the scene was as good as a comedy
ami a tragedy combined. With one
stride he was beside the landlord, and
giving him such a tongue-lashing as
no Billingsgate’s flshwoman could
surpass, At the same time he grasped
the offending maltchik by the nape of
neck and the seat ol his breeches, and
with one throw pitched bim out of the
window.
I have seen a great deal of the un
governable ray e of the average Russian
army officer, but I baa never seen a
real manifestation of it before. This,
however,was quite eqougfi. I.wm thor
oughly alarmed. The poor L diord
was so frightened that lie beg .;Vi for
mercy on his knees, and the u i fortu
nate servant, with just about life
en nigh left in his body to enab.e him
to move, crept away and hid himself,
not venturing to put in an appearance
again while we were iu the house.
We had intended getting breakfast
at this house before going to our per
manent quarters, but of course would
not do so now. Gvosdikoff ordered
our things to be eloaded upon our
sleigh, and the pOor landlord, profile®
with the most abject apologies, which
however,were summarily cut short by
our manner and our words, hastened
to obey the command. A note was
sent to the military commandant,
apprising him of our arrival, and an
other to the chief of police requesting
him to find suitable accommodations
for us at once. We had not long to
wait before receiving answers to both
notep. The commandant sent a lieu
tenant to say that he expected to re
ceive us at his residence, and the chief
of police having learned Gvosdikoff’s
rank and mission, had secured lodg
ings f r U3 at one of the finest houses
in the place. Tae latter accommodar
tion was preferred by Gvosdikoff, and
thither we were driven, and were soon
snugly ensconced in a comfortable room
where servants waiting upon us sup
plied us at once with tea and a hearty
breakfast of chops, steak and eggs,
bread and honey.
Painting Houses.
Mr. E. E. Rexford presents some
important factsou “PaintingHouses,”
in the American Agriculturist, from
which we select the following:
For country houses I would advise
for open, exposed places, a pale gray
or drab. There are complaints made
frequently that drab looks cold. It
cannot look colder than white does,
and there is no reason why it should
look cold at all, it proper care^ taken
to have the trimmings of the house of
some warm, cheerful color. I know
a drab house with deep, warm-toned
brown cornice and blinds, with plenty
of vines clambering up to break the
monotony ofthesuiface between the
windows, and it is one of the warmest
looking houses I kuow of. Iu the sum*
mer it is refreshing to look at it.
It does not pain the eyes with
its glare. It does not assert itself
the moment you reach the top
of the hill and come within
sight of it. white house would
draw your attention at once; and, no
matter how you might try to look at
something else, the white blotch on the
landscape would leave its impression
n your eyes, and you could not help
seeing it. This grey house seems part
of the landscape. Its color blends
well with the green about it. There
are no large trees around it, but there
are vines, and the general effect in
summer is cool and subdued, and in
winter it gives a sence of warmth an.'
comfort. Why it gives a sensation of
warmth at one season and of coolness
at another, is explained by the fact
that summer is a season of high, bright
colors, and the drab is in a lower tone
of color than those prevailing iu the
landscape. Winter is a season of but
little color, aud then drab, in contrast
with the snow-covered earth, becomes
cheerful, and the deep-touefi trim
mings, which should be seen on every
house painted in drabs or grays, give
a sense of warmth which they would
not have iu summer when all about it
is in high, decided tones.
“I’m in favor women voting, If they
want to,” said a political orator. “1,’d
like to see the man who’d m***. na
vote if we didn’t want to,”
a female auditor.