VARIETIES.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1258, 30 March 1878, Page 3

VARIETIES.

The ladies are all opposed to the telephone. They don't care to have a young fellow whispering in their ears with his mouth twenty miles away. It destroys a man's confidence in the dinner to come home and rind his wife clubbing a strange dog out of the yard with the vegetable masher. '•When I die," said a married man, "I want to go where there is no snow to shovel." His wife said nhe piesumed he would, The saesyest man I ever met \v. a henpeckt husband when he iz away from home. As the dew falls noiselessly upon the and the unjust; as the present passes silently into the past; and as the of a kindly act rises heavenward hired girl slips out the baejs way of nights with a little tea aud sugs£ for her nearest of kin. When you a man with a long willov; switch in h',;. band sneak cautiously dmvu to the back fence, aud stealthily pull himself up until his head is above the top of it, aud then look anxiously, longingly, and,with a disapp tinted expression withal, up and down and all around a vast, iijeitess and uninhabited scope of vacant Ipi, without a sign of hnmaa life about you may safely bet your little pdo that there is a broken pane in that man.'a. house, and a twelveyear"-old boy about a mile and still going.

"1 told her I'd never smoke another cigar," he said softly, "and 1 won't. A pipe's plenty good enough for me " —and he gracefully drew a match over the largest part of his trowsers.

One too Many.—Several men swam the Mississippi river above New Orleans for a wager. A reporter of the race says : "None of them seemed to be putting forth much effort till it was discovered that an alligator had struck out from shore as a competitor and then—well, every man did his bes-t to keep the alligator from carrying off the stakes."

Premature. —A poor woman lay very ill in her scantiiy-furnished home in Sheffield The doctor was sent for and came. He b ouce saw that here was a very grave case, and that she had, he thought, little chance of recovery, even if she could get the nourishments her illness required. As he was about to L ave, the question was put, "When should we send for you again, doctor V " Well," was the reply, as he looked at the poor woman and then at her wretched surroundings, " I don't thiak you need send for me again- She cannot i ossibly get better ; and to save you further trouble I'll just write you out a certificate for her burial." And he did. After the doctor departed, she woman—women always were wilful—got rapidly better, she has now completely recovered, and goes about carrying her burial l certificate with her.—" Sheffield Telegraph." . Torture in India. The "Times of India" of the 12th ult. says :—" The following facts, elicited at the trial at the recent session* in North Arcot of a case in which five natives were charged with having murdered five of their caste people, show that torture is not yet extinct in that part of the world. It appeared that the prisoners' ■ fields were robbed of a small quantity of cumboo, and the deceased and three others being suspected of having had a hand in the robbery, they were, by the orders of the first prisoner, who was the village reddy (headman), seized and tied, some to the trunk of trees and others to large stones. In the first case, the feet of the unformnate victims were tied above ground, but the mode adopted subsequently was even more cruel, for the men were bound with their faces exposed to the scorching rays of the sun, 'with their hands tied above their heads. The whole five having been firmly bound, cold water was, by the orders of the first prisoner, poured upon the ligatures, with the object of tightening the bonds, and thereby increasing the suffering of the suspected men. After this the first prisoner poured scalding water over the hands and arms of the sufferers. The object of this was to extort a confession of their guilt, and a statement implicating others. After the men had suffered excruciating agony for eight hours, and were released, it was found that one of them was dead, while the others were unable to move. Two of them died in hospital, whither they were sent for treatment; one expired in his village, while the fifth was able to give his evidence before the committing magistrate, but never rallied from the effects of the torture, and died after the case was committed to the Court of Sessions. The medical evidence was sickening in its details, and described how the arms, hands and lower extremities of the victims had become gargreaous, and how the fingers had rotted and dropped off. The authority and influence a reddy usually has in a village, went in a great measure to deter the spectators of this wholesale murder from interfering on behalf of the tortured men. The Court convicted the first, second, fourth, and fifth prisoners, and sentenced them as follows : —The first to death, and the second, fourth, and fifth to transportation for life. The third prisoner was acquitted."