The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-08-14 00:00:00

IARD.

69

breakers. We ran along the rocky bank, watching
the canoe tossing like a cork upon the waves, and
escaping destruction against some pointed rock by
virtue of the vigilance and dexterity of the men ; and
in three or four minutes it was safely moored in
backwater, and we arrived breathless to scold our
voyageurs for their rashness in risking our boat, and
their perfidy in not risking us along with it. We
determined, however, to profit by experience, and
amused ourselves, while the tea was being made for
luncheon, by jumping in about half way up the rapid,
and swimming down, or rather being hurled down it,
and seeing who arrived at the bottom first—which
created much the same interest to those on the bank as-
boys experience when racing straws in a gutter.
After this we found it very little use to dress at all,
and B. and I, having naturally amphibious habits,
used to spend the great part of the day with scarcely
anything on but a pipe ; and rapids or shallows followed
one another so fast and furiously that we were almost
as often out of the boat as in it. Le Feve was in his
glory on these occasions, and when we miraculously
escaped going to pieces on a rock, his face expanded
into a broad grin of satisfaction ; indeed, our approach
to a rapid was a season of excitement to us all, which
was worth the whole of our former experience put to-
gether.—Blackwood's Magazine.
THE TELEGRAPH AND }EOLIAN HARP.---The news
passes to music ! Whether country folks or city
belles listen, the Xolian harps strung along upon the
telegraph poles play perpetually the same. To the
strange beauty of this music (little noticed or valued)
I have become quite wedded, in my life out, of doors,
for the last winter. It is more varied and beautiful
than people think. You can always hear it, if not as
you walk upon the road, at least by laying your ear
against the poles ; and by selecting one that stands
near a running stream, you may hear a duet of breeze
and brook, a capricious outsinging of each other alter-
nately by wind and water, that is as heavenly to muse
by as a voluntary of Nature well could be. The poles
differ very much, both in the quantity and quality of
sound ; partly, perhaps, from difference of size, or
kind of wood, or tightness with which the wire is
pressed by the leaning ; but by stopping in your
walks, you get to know these with their variations,
and you may thus choose your standing-place, and
have music fainter or louder to suit your mood_
There is one telegraph post, by a little bridge which
crosses Idlewild-brook, where I have heard a great
deal of waking-dream accompaniment. Stopping there
with the glow of exercise in the blood, there seems a
kind of fellowship in the instrument being, like one's
self, independent of the wintry air. The invalid's
nerves too (as much more susceptible to pleasure as to
pain), are ready for harmony in its most delicate
caprices. What news was going past on those wires
---what death or marriage, love or business, was being
told in those varied vibrations---I did not lose
romance by trying to guess or discriminate. The
same tune seldom carries the same language to any
two hearts. But there it was, murmuring day by
day, in changeful contention with the brook, always
somewhat audible when closely listened for, and often
as loud as a love-whisper, and as changefully ex-
pressive, and I must own to have grown habituated
fo it as a luxury.---.N. P. Willis.
A POLICE CouRT.---The beak (magistrate) seated
himself, and for some time there passed before him a
portion of the grim phantasmagoria of depravity,
want, and brutality which every morning surges up
to the judgment-seat from the turbid sea of London
existence. The wife, foully battered and bruised by
her husband, came as usual, and hardly raised her
swollen eyes to deny his counter-charge of drunken-
ness and aggravation. The mother was there to beg
the law to protect her from the child that robbed and
kicked her, and the vicious cub replied with a lie of
starvation and ill-usage. The baby was laid, all bones
and bruises, before the minister of justice, to testify
that a beast's dam is kinder than some baptised and
married mothers. Vile women, hoarse and pert, told
their shameless quarrels, and bared their flesh to
show the wounds of nails and teeth. A brawny
ruffian, his head and face seamed with crimson
plaisters, pleaded that drink had maddened him, and
hoped that the blows he had received before he could be
secured might atone for his having mutilated three or
four officers. Children were placed behind a barrier,
over which nothing but their shock hair and bright
eyes could be seen, to be judged for pilfering, while