A STRIKING ILLUSTRATION.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 398, 16 August 1861, Page 4

A STRIKING ILLUSTRATION.

A company of individuals united themselves together in a mutual benefit association.

The blacksmith comes and Fays, * Gentlemen I wish to become a member of your association.'

• Well, what can you do?'

'Ob, I can shoe your horses, iron your carriages, and make all kinds of iron implements.' 1 Very well, come in, Mr. Blacksmith.' The mason applies for admission into the society

1 And what can you do, Mr. Mason V * Oh I can build your barns and houses, and stables and bridges.'

•Very well, come in, we can't do without

you.' Along comes a shoemaker, and Bays, • I wish to become a member of your society.'

' Well what can you do ?' * I can make boots and shoes for you.' ' Come in Mr. Shoemaker we must have you. So, in turn, apply all the different trades and professions, till lastly an individual comes and wants to become a member. * And what are you ?' * I am a Rum- seller.'

' A Rum-seller I and what can you do?' ' I can build jails, and prisons, and poorhouses.' •

• And is that all ?'

1 No, I can fill them ; lean fill your jails with criminals, your prisons with convicts, and your poor-houses with paupers.'

'And what else can you do ?' * I can bting the grey hairs of the aged to the grave with sorrow; I can break the heart of the wife, and blast the prospects of the friends of talent, and fill your land with more than the plagues of Egypt/ * Is that all you can do ?' * Good heavens!' cries the Rum-seller •is not that enough ?'

The British census has many remarkable facts upon this subject. More than half a million (586,030) persons in Great Britain have passed the ' threescore years and ten' of the Psalmist, and 129,000, fourscore; 9847 have lived over ninety years; and 2038 over ninety-five years; and 319 have exceeded over one hundred years.

The Havoc of War.—The * Advocate of Peace' gives some sad details on the above subject. Napoleon's wars alone sacrificed full six millions, and all the wars consequent on the French Revolution some nine or ten millions. The Spaniards are said to have destroyed in forty-two years more than twelve millions of American Indians. Grecian wars sacrificed 15,000,000; Jewish wars 25,000,000; the wars of the twelve Caesars, 30,000,000 in all; the wars of the Romans before Julius Catsar, 60,000,000, &c. Dr. Dick, in summing up similar calculations to the above, estimates the destruction of human life in battle and through the natural consequences of war at one-tenth of the human race, or fourteen thousand millions of human beings. The celebrated patriot Edmund Burke went still further, and reckoned the sum total of its ravages, from the first, at no less than thirtyfive thousand millions 1

A Settlement in Anticipation.—Old John Danders was a country blacksmith, the husband of a young wife. John had laboured long and assiduously, and enjoyed the custom of all the farmers around. When John was on his death bed, he called his wife Janet. 'Janet, my woman I'm no lang for this worlds I'm leavin ye noo, Janet; In wearin awa' like snaw affa dyke. Aboat the business, Janet There's Andrew, the foreman he kens a' about it, an* a' the customers like him; yell just let a decent time elapse, and ye II make' it up wi' Andrew, and ye 11 marry him, Janet, an' keep the business thegither., *Ochone!' 6aid Janet, bursting into loud lamentation, • Andrew an' me's settled a' that already.

Miranda the Forger. —Information reached this colony by the last mail that the notorions Miranda, whose enormous forgeries on the Australian Joint Stock Bank in Sydney must be fresh in the recollection of our readers, has met with a violent dea h. It appears after leaving this colony with the proceeds of his crime, he sailed for Callao, and resided for a considerable period in Spanish South America. A few months ago he v ent to New York, and there engaged in speculative pursuits. In November last, in the course of what our Ameri-

can friends term 'a difficulty* with some person with whom lie had had business transactions, Miranda received the contents of a pistol in his stomach and shortly afterwards expired. Such is the end of one of the most accomplished swindlers of the nineteenth century.— Melbourne Herald. A French schoolmaster has elaborated the following rule for ascertaining with which day of the week any given year will begin: —Take the figures expressing the year; add to these one quarter of the sum they represent, without afraction in the case of bissextile years, and with an additional unit in the case of ordinary years; divide your total by 7» and the remainder will give the day of the week with which the year will begin; 1 standing for Sunday, 2 for Monday, 3 for Tuesday, and so on until the Saturday, which must be represented not by a seven, but by a nought (0). Thus, for the present year: 1861 plus one quarter of that sum, or 465, plus 1 (as it is an ordinary year) is equal to 2227, which number, divided by 7, gives as remainder 3, showing that the year began with the third day of the week, or Tuesday. Fish.— The Agricultural Society of France has had the different rivers of the. Basses Alpea stocked with 740,000 eggs of the * tera,' one of the kinds of fish in the Swiss lakes, and belonging to the same family as the salmon.