"WORDS OF THE WISE."

Otago Daily Times, Issue 49, 11 January 1862, Page 2

"WORDS OF THE WISE."

When we are alone we have our thoughts to watch ; iv our families, our tempers ; and in society, our tongues. lie that doe 3 not know those things which are of use and necessity for him to know, is but an ignorant man, whatever lie may know beside. Let not any one say he cannot govern his passions, nor hinder them from breaking out and carrying him into action; for what lie can do bef >re a prince or a great man, he can do alone, or in the presence of if he will. . Whatever difficulties you have to encounter, be not perplexed ; but think only what is right to do iv the sight of Him who seeth all things, and bear without repining the result. The most sublime spectacle in the world is a powerful mind vindicating truth in the presence of its foes, and a martyr calmly sealing his faith with his blood. Give children a sound and literary education— useful learning for sails, and integrity for ballast —set them afloat upon the sea of life, and their voyage will be prosperous in the best sense of the word. He who would pass the latter part of his life with honour and decency must, when.he is young, consider that he shall one day bo old ; and remember, when he is old, that he lias once been young, In youth he must lay up knowledge for I his support when his power of action shall forsake him ; and in age forbear to animadvert with rigour on faults which experience only can correct. If there be pleasure on earth which angels cannot enjoy,and which they might almost envy man the possession of, it is the power of relieving distress ; if there be a pain which devils might pity man for enduring, it is the deathbed recollection that we have possessed the power of doing good, but that we have abused and perverted it to purposes of ill. It is mind, after all, that does the work of the world ; so that the more there is of mind the more work will be accomplished. A man in proportion as he is intelligent, makes a given force accomplish a greater task, makes skill take the place of muscles, and, with less labour, gives a better IJroduce. It is not known where he that invented the plough was born, nor where he died ; yet he lias effected more for the happiness of the world than the whole race of heroes and conquerors who have drenched the earth with tears, and manured it with blood, and whose birth, parentage, and education have been handed down to us with a precision precisely proportionate to the mischief they have done.

Mr. Mosler, of Giesen, relates the case of a S 11" 1. who, suffering from an affection of the ear consequent upon an attack of typhoid fever, was suddenly seized with a sneezing fit wliich last wr eighty hours. Reckoning ten sneezes per minute he makes out that the girl must have sneezed 48,000 times. "Whereas in some countries, and unfortunately for them, men try to rise from the level upon which they stand*by pulling others down, in this country men try to rise from the level upon which they stand, not by pulling others down, but by raising themselves.—" Lord JPalmerston's address at Southampton." A lady sent a dress to a dyer, with instructions to dye it in some colours that would not run. Tho patriotic dyer returned tiio ilress covered all over with the colours of the Union Jack. ' I have millions ot m-incy,' said a dashing gent to a girl about to run away with him ; ' but you might as well scrape up all the jewels and spare change you have got.' The latest Yankee invention is a new fashioned travelling bag, in which a man can stow himself upon a journey, and travel without the knowledge of such sponges as tling a man for his fare. lie places himself in the bag, and taking it in his hand, passes for baggage. 'Johnny,' said a mother to a" son,nine years old, 'go and wash your face. lam ashamed to see you coining to dinner with so dirty a mouth.' ' I did wash it mamma !' and, feeling with his upper lip, he added gravely, 'I think it must be a moustache coming.'

MisßKroitriNH Extkaokdinaiiv. —When the hon. members of the Legislative Assembly complain ofljcin.vT jnisivporfcd. and think explanation derogatory, it may he interesting to the public to know what is tliu kind of raw material such gentlemen furnish to he converted into speeches. A specimen of unadulterated, Western eloquence appeared a short time ago. The following is fresh from the !i;is of a Northern orator, who probably may look upon it even in print, with the eye of a poet, and consider that it is " When unadorn'd, adorned the most." " I certainly do agree with the lion, gentleman last sat down, and many hon. members who preceded him. It is not my intention to vutciigainst any amount that the Government limy bring forward in a legitimate and straightforward honest manner. In fact, I would vote for this amount perhaps ultimately, but for the present I shall vote to have it postponed because these two amounts are, I suppose, nearly the whole amounts, especially the first and the great portion of the second is expended, and because the military be withdrawn a great portion of them ; and secondly the. Colonial Secretary or the Government must know pretty well the items composing this—a very largo amount must be known to them in item, and I do submit to the House not only the £9000 for the military at Lambing Flat, but there arc other items we should come to bye and bye, when we consider the £15,000 voted in one sum for the Minister of Lands to lay out by-roads, I think he has n right to have the items of that large 6um of money. There is, again,?£2s,ooo" The hon. member was here reminded by the chairman that he was travelling from the question. The following is his peroration :—" The House has no right to slum the matter over in the way he is doing. Talk of rubbish and going to Lambing Flat! The hon. member accused of splawsibility, but I think there was a good deal of oily gammon used at Lambing Flat on the visit there, and I do think what the House has asked of the Colonial Secretary is nothing but their just rights, and it ought to be granted before the sum is past, because when once the sum is voted, we may bid good-by to any item. Therefore I shall feel a pleasure in voting for the motion of adjourning these two^items." The foregoing is more lucid than some of the lion, gentleman's addresses, and the speech throughout was remarkable for the scarcity of new wo) ds, such as." financial," "incapacinted," and other philological curiosities of alike kind, which on other occasions electrify the House.— Sydney Herald. Nathan Meyer Rothschild, the Millionaire.—Rothschild avoided most of the speculations of 1824 and 1825 ; yet the Alliance Assurance Company was'projected by him, and with complete success. No loan recognised by him was ever repudiated •" "at his office a reasonable price could be obtained, even in the most disastrous times, for all descriptions of legitimate scrip; and brokers of the respectable class often found it •wise to apply to him instead of resorting to the Stock Exchange. Still he was occasionally outwitted. A banker lent him £15,000,000 on the security of consols, the price being 84. The terms were simple. If the price fell to 74, the lender might claim lus stock at 70. The bargain appeared safe, so vast a sum being withdrawn from the market; but the banker commenced selling enormous sums of consols, and the price fell. The brokers were alarmed, various depressing rumors were abroad, the price dropped to 74, and Rothschild for once was over-reached. One day, he went to the bank to negociate for bullion ; terms were agreed upon ; • and a date fixed for its return. Punctual to' the day, he presented the governor with the amount borrowed, in notes. The necessity for bullion was urged. " "Very well, give me the notes ! I dare say your cashier will honor them with gold from your vaults, and then I can return the bullion." He was impenetrably secret. If he obtained news likely to make consols rise, lie would sell out largely. He was sure to have numerous imitators, and in a few hours the funds went down. Panic followed ; thssre was a reduction of two or three per cent. Strangv brokers, employed by him, would then buy at the reduced rate ; and when the favorable intelligence was known, the harvest was immense. His sources of foreign news were very reliable. He was aware of the Paris revolution, in 1830, many hours before the government. His severest loss was on the Polignac loan. The price fell thirty per cent., and an ordinary capitalist must have been ruined. Disappointed competitors in Capel Court sometimes grew desperate, and threatened to assassinate him ; often anonymous letters informed him of his personal danger, and though he affected to treat them with contempt, such risk occasioned him constant anxiety. Two tall bearded men once entered his counting house ; Rothschild bowed, so did his visitors ; their hands were in their pockets. Nathan Meyer thought they were fumbling for pistols ; catching up a ledger, he hurled it at the strangers, and called loudly for aid. Yet they were only preparing to produce letters of introduction. " You must be a happy man," said a guest, glancing at his splendid saloon. " Happy ! Me happy ?" was his answer, " when just as I am going to dine, a letter reaches me, with a threatening paragraph—' Send me £500, or I will blow your brains out I'" It was pretended that he commonly slept with loaded pistols nndcr his pillow. He lived in a stylo of extreme magnificence, and was the companion of the highest nobles in the land, nay, royalty itself did not prohibit his visits. Once at Paris, in conversation with the Due dc Montmorenci, his title having just been granted, he said, " I am as much •honoured as you ; yon style yourself the first Christian baron, and I am the first Jew baron 1" He was constantly caricatured and satirized. Slovenly and. ungainly in his person, he looked singularly uncouth as he propped himself against his column in the Exchange. He spoke very imperfect English, and his voice was harsh and discordant. It is but fair to mention, that he was charitable to his poorer brethren.— Press. ft Treatment op Criminals.—The enquiry into the burning of the Empress of the Seas has revealed a fact in connection with the treatment of our criminals that ought not to be allowed to pass unnoticed. John Goldman, the person who, whether rightly or wrongly, appears to have been suspected of setting the ship on fire, was, as he says, sentenced to death, having been found guilty of the murder of one Corporal Harvey. Through the intervention of Archdeacon Stretch, and one or two others, a messenger was despatched to Melbourne, on the Sunday preceding the Monday fixed for his execution, to try and obtain his reprieve, and through the exertions of that messenger and his horse, as well as through a peculiar laziness of the timepieces at the gaol on that morning, Goldman's life was saved by a few minutes. He was ordered for execution at eight o'clock, but the messenger arrived at twen-ty-five minutes past eight, with his reprieve— much to the disgust, I dare say, of a crowd of women, men, and boys, who had congregated to witness the exit of the criminal from this world. Whether Goldman ought to have been reprieved or not, lam not now going to argue, but what I wish to point out is, that being sentenced to death for murder, his sentence was commuted to fifteen years' hard labour, the first three years in irons. Tins sentence was passed on the 2Gth July, 1853, and the commutation was ordered in the following month. But as Goldman says His Excellency pardoned him on the 2nd December instant, it follows that he did not serve much more than one half of his commuted punishment. Further, according to the mate's testimony, he (Goldman) seems to have been ready for a second murder as soon as he could ; because, by that officer's testimony, Goldman threatened to " knifa" him on receiving some provocation. I merely draw attention to this matter to show the extreme danger of ever allowing men guilty of murder to mix in society again, and to prove that the' sentence of our criminals are not carried out in their integrity. The fact of lus pardon being conditional on his leaving the country, is perhaps a benefit to our population, but it cannot surely be urged as a legitimate reason for setting him free— Argus. Beriout. —A newspaper has been-commenced and is now printed at Bcriout or Beyrout, in Syria, after the style of the home journals", only the proprietors seem to have coined a new language, something between the English and the Arabic. Buhinxnii Krusi (Robinson Crusoe) has been transit)ted and printed, and the paper contains short reviews of Faribaldi (Garibaldi), Bmberulor Nabidimi (EmperorNapoleon),and Fitttor Evunnict (Victor Emmanuel). But perhaps the most extraordinary the matter as coming from a nation always regarded as complete barbarians, is a review of the American war, and the general armament of Europe. The subjects of the King of Wurtemberg have been celebrating the eightieth anniversary of the birthday of their Sovereign, who is the oldest monarch iv .Europe. We lenrn from all quarters that farmers are ifKiiii,' their pi;_>,s in great numbers by a disease which first aMptnifs in a redness behind the ears, and m severe is it that they do not survive longer than half an hour after it shows itself.— SkibbciKcu liuijle. .