Miscellaneous.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1188, 30 October 1882, Page 8 (Supplement)

Miscellaneous.

INCONGRUOUS FANCIES IN DREAMING. In a work published by Dr. Symonds, of England, the author tells us that, in sleep—with the muscles relaxed,’the senses at rest, thought and voluntary motion in repose—the work of the organic functions goes on, the blood circulates, is purified by respiration, and, for the time being, the body lives the life of a vegetable. But there are varied degrees of sleep. Some of our senses may be comparatively wakeful, whilst others are in sound repose. In this state one organ may receive impressions that will excite activity of association in others more or less wakeful. It is this incomplete state of sleep, this semi-repose of the faculties, which produces dreams. Dr. Macnish, “ happening to sleep in damp sheets, dreamed he was dragged through a stream.” Dr. Symonds witnessed in his sleep what he thought was a prolonged storm of thunder, which he was afterward able to trace to the light of a candle brought suddenly into the dark room where he had fallen asleep. He relates that a person having a blister applied to his head, fancied he was scalped by a party of Indians. “ I remember when a boy, sleeping in a strange house, in an old-fashioned room, with an oaken store-cupboard over the bed. I dreamt that I was being murdered, the assassin struck me on the head, and I awoke with a sense of pain in that region. Putting my hand to my forehead, I found it sticky—with blood ! I felt almost too ill to cry for help, but, at length, I alarmed the household; and, on procuring a light, it was discovered that some fermenting jam had leaked through the bottom of the cupboard and fallen upon my head in a sluggish stream. A few months ago, shortly before going to bed a friend had been discussing with me, the peculiar instincts of animals, and, 'more particularly, their sense of the coming on of storms. After this he dreamed he was a Worcester short-horn, grazing in a pleasant meadow on the Herefordshire side of Malvern Hills. He had a number of companions. Signs of storm appeared in the sky; a misty vapour hung on the well-known beacon. He remembered distinctly, although he was a cow, watching, with a sense of great delight, the beauty of the preliminary tokens of the storm. With the other cows he quietly strolled towards the shelter of an adjacent tree, and waited until the storm should break. He was chewing the cud, and he relished its herbaceous flavor. He distinctly remembered wagging his tail; yet all the time he had full reasoning faculties, and a lively sense of the beauties of the scenery.” Dr. Macnish says, once his dreaming travelled so far into the regions of absurdity, that he conceived himself to be riding upon his own back ; one of the resemblances being mounted on another, and both animated with a soul appertaining to himself in such a manner, that he knew not whether he was the carrier or the carried.

These are odd examples of the incongruity of “ the imperfection of the dreaming memory,” which is most strongly illustrated when we dream of those who are dead. “We believe them still to be living, simply because we have forgotten that they are dead.” A friend of Dr. Symonds dreamed that he was dead, and that he carried his own body in a coach to bury it. When he reached the place of burial, a stranger said, “ I would not advise you, sir, to bury your body in this place, for they are about to build so near it, that I have no doubt the body will be disturbed by the builders.” “ That,” replied the dreamer, “ is very true. I thank you for the information, and will bury it in another spot.” Upon which he awoke.— Phrenological Journal. O Heaven ! for one generation of clean unpolluted men—men whose veins are not fed by fire; men fit to be companions of pure women ; men worthy to be the fathers of children ; men do who not stumble upon the rock of apoplexy at mid-age, or go blindly groping and staggering down into a drunkard’s grave, but who sit and look upon the faces of their grandchildren with eyes undimmed and hearts uncankered. Such a generation as this is possible, and to produce such a generation as this the persistent, conscientious work Of the public press is entirely competent as an instrumentality.—Dr. J. G. Holland. RIDING AN ALLIGATOR. On last Saturday morning a scene took place at Lake Lockloosa Station on the Peninsula Railroad, Florida, which for genuine excitement and sensation will completely lay in the shade the best Spanish bull-fight on record. A party of men on the wharf saw a large alligator about a hundred yards out in the lake, gently reposing amid the ripple that a pleasant breeze was making. Some of the party got into a boat, carrying with them a small harpoon hook, and rowed out to the alligator. When in convenient distance the harpoon was thrown, and with unerring shot made its way into the beast just behind the right fore leg. No sooner than this was done, and while the alligator was raging in the waters in its most powerful efforts to release itself, one of the party, a Mr. Posey, a man probably 50 years of age, leaped into the lake, swam to the rearing and surging monster, got upon its back, grabbed it around the neck and rode it to land, amid the shouts of

those who were fortunate enough to witness the exciting scene. When measured the monster was found to be ten feet and six inches long. Strange to say, after Mr. Posey had backed him and grippled him around the neck the beast was almost entirely subdued. A few lunges and he quietly followed the tightening of the rope until he reached the shore, a tamer, but greatly confused, alligator. His mouth was then muzzled and a rope tied round his belly, and he was hauled up on the platform at the depot. When the afternoon train came along, the passengers got out to look at the beast and its valiant captor, and then another scene took place, quite as exciting and extraordinary as the one in the water. Posey got on the ’gator to ride it for the entertainment of the crowd. After much tickling and spurring, he aroused the animal into such a desperate struggle for freedom, that everybody expected to see some one literally chewed up, and swallowed by it. In the melee it snapped the ropes that were bound around its long and brutal mouth, and then, making a dash for the ground, it was swung up by the rope, tied by its body, and fastened to a post. It soon broke this, and fell heavily to the ground, when it put out for the lake. But it was .scarcely landed before Posey was on Us back, when a struggle ensued between man and alligator, that could scarcely have its parallel in the arena of acrobatic action.

The crowd scattered at this appalling scene, and men there who, if fist fights with alligators were a feasible and practicable thing, would be strong enough for the business, exclaimed that the world had not treasure enough to enter such a struggle. Yet, in a few seconds, Posey was master of the situation, the saurian was conquered, and lay as quietly under the grasp of his conqueror as if, instead of being 400 pounds of real live alligator, it was the most cowardly cur. A shout of victory went up for Posey, and parties went to his assistance, and, again tying anct securing the animal, the job was completed, and the hero of the fight offered his prisoner in market for the trifling sum of $lO. — Florida Lacon. OSCAR WILDE’S STORY OF ROSETTI’s WIFE. At my request Mr. Wilde repeated the story he had told in Boston to the poet John Boyle O’Reilly’s guests, of Rosetti’s wife—a beautiful woman, with a wonderful glory of red gold hair, who had entered his life to mould and colour it with her love, and to shape all his work. One day, in the act of raising a Venetian glass filled with wine to her lips, she died. No one knew why. With her life passed away all his interest and his hopes, and the sonnets which he felt to be her Work as much as his, he put into a leaden casket and had buried with her in her coffin. Some years after his friends begged that he would restore to the world the poems, and, at last, they prevailed upon him to allow them to be taken from the grave. To do this they applied to Mr. Bruce (a secretary and the authority, I suppose) who, Mr. Wilde humorsly said, could understand a thing that was an export or an import, or that had a name on the stock exchange, but to whom the word poet conveyed nothing, and who was lost in amused astonishment, that anyone could think that a poet’s works could confer honour upon England. However, in the end permission was given, the grave was opened, the coffin lid raised, and behold, the beautiful red hair had grown to a great length, and wound about her grave-robe; the leaden casket had broken by weight of the earth upon it, and the wonderful hair had grown in and around the sonnets, and made a lace-like mesh on every page.— Florence I. Duncan, in Quiz. PARISIAN LIARS. Galignani’s Messenger says : During the early part of the campaign in Mexico, a French corps was encamped for some time near a wood swarming with parrots. Every morning at daybreak the bugles sounded the notes of the air to which have been set the well-known words : As-tu-vu La casquette, la casqucttc ? As-tu-vu La casquette du per Bugcaud ? and the parrots soon made their leafy resort resound with a perfect imitation of the tune. It has been handed down from father to son, and we learn that some French travellers who recently passed through the forest were greatly, and very naturally, astounded by hearing the air— As-tu-vu La casquette, la casquette ? As-tu-vu La casquette du per Bugeaud ! admirably rendered from the trees around them.— Detroit Free Press. “ HOANG NAN,” A NEW CHINESE REMEDY. The learned Abbe Lesserteur has forwarded to the ; French Geographical Society a pamphlet on the “Hoang Nan,” a plant used in Tonquin i’i cases of hydrophobia, leprosy, snake bite, Ac. In presenting this pamphlet to the Geographical Society, M. Romanet du Caillot said that the new remedy was supposed to be an effectual cure for hydrophobia. The plant in question has been carefully classified by M. Pierrede Saignon, the botanist. He placed it among the strychnia), and is of opinion that it may useful to tropical explorers. The traveller, Abbe Lesserteur, gives an account of the .cure, in Tonquin, of the bite of the black viper by means of this plant, and two cases of the cure of fhe bite of the cobra de capcllo in India; the bite of the cobra, he asserts, means simply death within half-an-hour. M. Fcron, a French missionary in India, who appears to have some experience of the new remedy, has written that a boy of seventeen years of age was bitten on the heel by a cobra. In a few minutes, the lad’s leg swelled up as far as the thigh, and in less than ten minutes his sight was completely gone. The first three pills restored his sight, and reduced the swelling of the leg to below the knee ; two more reduced it to the sole of the foot. At the end of half-an-hour no pain was felt, except that occasioned by the lesion of the tendon Achilles, and this pain disappeared as the wound proceeded to cicatrization.

Mrs. Florence E. Cory, of New York, is credited with receiving $4,000 a-year for designs for carpets. She very aptly says that there is a wide field in this direction for the employment of woman’s taste and skill. She makes designs for various houses in New York and Philadelphia, and is paid according to their value. A recent number of the Celestial Empire, referring to a discovery of some ancient graves near Shanghai, gives an interesting account of Chinese burial in former times. A man of means purchased a coffin when he reached the age of forty. He would then have it painted three times every year with a species of varnish, mixed with pulverised porcelain—a composition which resembled a silicate paint or enamel. The process by which this varnish was made has now been lost to the Chinese. Each coating of this paint was of some thickness, and, when dried, had a metallic firmness resembling enamel. Frequent coats of this, if the owner lived long, caused the coffin to assume the appearance of a sarcophagus, with a foot or more in thickness of this hard, stone-like shell. After death, the veins and the cavities of the stomach were filled with quicksilver, for the purpose of preserving the body. A piece of jade would then be placed in each nostril and ear, and in one hand, while a piece of bar silver would be placed in the other hand. The body thus prepared, was placed on a layer of mercury within the coffin ; the latter was sealed, and the whole then committed to its last resting place. When some of these sarcophagi were opened after the lapse of centuries, the bodies were found in a wonderful state of preservation ; but they crumbled to dust on exposure to the air. The writer well observes that the employment of mercury by the Chinese of past dynasties, for the purpose of preserving bodies, ought to form an interesting subject for consideration and discussion in connection with the history of embalming and “ mummy-making.” A PAIR FROM MARK TWAIN. We submit the following pair of jokes make the best brace to be found in Mark Twain’s

sayings or writings. If anyone can offer better ones we shall be glad to publish them : Speaking of Ingersoll’s lecture on “ The Mistakes of Moses,” he said : “ I wouldn’t give a cent to hear Ingersoll on Moses, but I’d give $lO to hear Moses on Ingersoll.” In the preface of his “ Tramp Abroad” he says : “ I’m going to try to keep statistics out of this book ; but I doubt if I succeed. Figures stew out of me just as naturally as the otter of roses out of the otter.”