DE OMNIBUS REBUS.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 80, 2 September 1874, Page 3

DE OMNIBUS REBUS.

! Don't prevaricate, sir ’ thundered a Columbia judge to a witness from the mines, ‘Han’t help it, judge, answered the miner. ‘ Ever since I got a kick from a mule that knocked my teeth out, I prevaricate a good deal.’ An Indiana lawyer used the word‘disparagement ’ in his plea, and the judge told him if be couldn’t quit using Latin words he should sit down. The lawyer undertook to define his position and was fined £2O for contempt of Court. Lamartine was asked by a friend if he did not spend too much in advertising. ‘ No,’ was the reply, ‘ advertisements are absolutely necessary. Even Diviue Worship needs to bo advertised. Else what is the meaning of chnrch bells ?’ Borne of the old records of the town of Duxbury have been unearthed ; one of them, bearing date 1665, tells ns that the town voted to purchase ‘'one half quire of paper for use of the town,” and such extravagance was criticised by the old inhabitants. The following persuasive and encouraging note was attached to a babe left on the door step in St Louis—“ —Sir, Please accept this orphan child. If you should despise the gift, give it to some one who will appreciate it. ‘ Prom the little acorn the mighty oak towers above.’ This waif may yet be a Washington.” A Detroit negro prisoner, on his way to the penitentiary for larceny, was asked what he thought of his trial. He said: “When de lawyer dat ’fended me madea speech, I made suredat I was going to take my ole hat and walk right out of dat co’ts room ; but when the older lawyer got up and commenced talking I knew I was the biggest rascal on top of de earf.’ A Connecticut deacon in the olden times was sore troubled about the scientific assertion that the sun was a stationary body, and did not move around the earth. ‘ For,’ said he to his minister, “ didn’t Joshua command the sun to stand still?” “Very well,” responded the dominie, “ show me, if you can, the passage of scripture where it says that Joshua ever commanded the sun to move again.” A little boy with an inquiring thoughtful mind asked his father what was meant by full dress, as if every one should not be fully dressed at all times. The father, who had three grown-up daughters and a wife, who yearned after the early love of fashion, was thoughtful a moment, but replied with a heavy sigh, indicating, deep feeling : “ Full dress is where the wearer puts one-third of her dress on her person and drags two-thirds on the ground.” A remarkable magnetic cave has, accordcording to a correspondent of the Sutton Creek Independent , a Californian newspaper, has been discovered near Pine Grove, Amader county, in that country; Mr Stokes, the gentleman who relates the story, gives the following account of the cave in question : —After journeying for a mile and a quarter through the underground passages, Mr Stokes and his fellow travellers found themselves in a long but rather narrow chamber, the walls of which were “ not limestone, but a yellowish brown and black iron ore.” Upon entering this chamber says Mr Stokes, “we noticed a most peculiar disturbance of the magnet, the needle constantly vibrating from side to side, and frequently whirling round for a minute at a time with a velocity which rendered it invisible. We also experienced a singular sensation —a sort of chill appearing to commence at the back of the neck and extending to the very tip of our fingers and toes. As we advanced in this chamber we found these singular sensations increase in intensity until they became almost unbearable, As the travellers proceeded the walls and floor of this chamber became more magnetic; indeed inconveniently so. for one of the party who carried a hatchet had it wrested from him by a magnetic rock near which i e passed, and the combined srtrength of four of the party was insufficient to detach it. Nor was this all, for a pocket knife that accidentally dropped to the floor had to remain there, none of the party having sufficient strength to pick it up. Worse still was in the background. One of the explorers, named Mason, had unfortunately on his feet a pair of miner’s boots, the soles of which were studded with nails. Admirable as these boots would be in Great Britain for a working man to kick his wife to death with, they were worse than useless in a magnetic cave. Mason labored on with great difficulty, until at last he found himself “ suddenly affixed to tlm floor and unable to move.” He was immediately pulled out of his boots by his companions, his coat was torn to pieces and used as wraps to protect his poor feet, and, sickened and alarmed by this incident, Mr Stokes and his friends “ hastily retreated,” and witfl a feeling of intense relief emerged from this too attractive cave into the open. The following touching lament for a deceased wife, from a disconsolate editor of a Missouri paper, appears in the columns of that journal;—'Thus my wife died. No more will those loving hands pull off my boots and part my back hair as only a wife can. Nor will those willing feet replenish the coal hod or water pail. No more will she arise amid the tempestuous storms of winter and hie away to the fire without disturbing the slumbers of the man who doted on her so artlessly. Her memory is embalmed upon my heart of hearts. I wanted to embalm her body, but I found I could embalm her memory cheaper. I procured of Eli Mudgett, a neighbor of mine, a very pretty gravestone. His wife was consumptive, and he kept it on hand several years in anticipation of her death. But she rallied last spring, and his hopes were blasted j Never shall 1 forget the poor man’s griel* when I asked him to part with it. “ Take it, Skinner, “ he hoarsely whispered, “ and may you never know what it is to have your soul disappointed as mine has been ;” and he burst into a flood of tears. His spirit was, indeed, utterly broken. I had the following epitaph engraved upon the tombstone ; —“ To the memory of Tabitha, wife of Moses Skinner, Esq., gentlemanly editor of the Trombone. Terms, throe dollars a year, invariably in advance. A kind mother and an exemplary wife. Office over Coleman’s grocery, up two flights of stairs. Knock hard. Wo shall miss thee, mother; we shall miss thee. Job printing solicited.” Thus, like Rachel weeping for her children, did my lacerated spirit cry out in agony. But. one ray of light penetrated the despair of my soul. The undertaker took iris pay in job printing, and the sexton owed me a little account 1 should not have gotten any other way. Why should we pine at the mysterious ways of ‘ Providence and vicinity (not a conundrum) ?