The Sun.
London, England, 1864-11-14 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF

MATRIMONIAL HOAX AT BIRKENHEAD,—About
a week or ten days ago there appeared an advertise-
ment from some adventurer, who described himself as a
" gentleman, aged 24 years, in a very respectable position,"
and who wished to "communicate with an amiable
young lady from 18 to 22, with a view to matrimony."
This advertisement attracted the notice of several young
men at Birkenhead, and, bent upon having some fun at
the expense of the unknown wife-hunter, they addressed
a letter to " B 92, Mercury office," under the signature of
4, E. Stewart," who describes himself as an " amiable
young lady," with good pecuniary prospects. The bait
took, and, after one or two loving epistles had passed
between the " couple," the young lady proposed a meet-
ing with her unknown admirer, who gave the name of
" P. Oleck," and stated that he was a native of Germany,
and resided in Rodney-street Liverpool. A meeting was
accordingly arranged to take place at the Grange Hotel
Grange Lane, where, the young lady alleged, she was stay-'
ing with a relative. The night arrived,
and the foreigner
made his appearance at the Grange Hotel, but as "Miss
Stewart" was not punctual to her appointment he imme-
diately left, doubtless suspecting that he was about to be
caught in a trap. The "young lady," however, wrote on
the following day a letter, apologising for not fulfilling her
engagement on the previous night, alleging that a rich
uncle had just arrived in this country after a long absence
abroad, and that she could not leave him. She concluded
by proposing another meeting for Monday night at the
Dock Hotel, which she said was kept by a particular friend
of hers. This brought a reply from the adventurer, who ex-
pressed his willingness to meet ‘, Miss Stewart" at the place
named, and, said he, "If it shall happen that I am ten
or fifteen minutes too late, excuse me, as I am a stranger
in town." He also requested the young lady to "begin"
towards him, "as it will be hard for me to introduce
myself to your friends, as I am a little shy from the wel-
come I had at the Grange Hotel." The time fixed was 7
o'clock, and at that hour a party of young fellows were as-
sembled at the Dock Hotel. Punctual to the minute, tg P.
Oleck," the foreigner, entered the hotel, and took a seat in
the parlour. After a
short time, a servant entered the
apartment and asked him whether he was the gentleman
who wished to see " Miss Stewart." He replied that he was,
and he was then asked upstairs to the drawing-room, the
servant stating that the young lady would be with him
immediately. Anxiously the foreigner waited, but instead
of meeting an amiable young lady, about 30 young fellows,
headed by "Miss Stewart" in male attire, rushed into the
room and began to torment the wife-hunter. The poor
fellow was thunderstruck ; in broken English he begged to
be allowed to leave the house, but the " young lady" and
her companions were inexorable. A jury was empannolled,
a judge appointed, and learned counsel were named to pre-
fez the charge against the defendant of attempting to obtain
a wife by false representations. After bearing evidence
and sundry speeches, the jury found the wife-hunter guilty,
and as a penalty for his offence he was ordered to stand
glasses round, or in default to be blacked and floured. The
unhappy adventurer had only just enough in his pockets
to pay his fare back to Liverpool, and consequently had to
submit to the second part of the sentence. His tormentors
bedaubed his clothes with soot and grease, and afterwards
sprinkled him with flour. In this condition they escorted
him to Woodside Ferry, amidst the laughter of the con-
spirators and a number of other persons who were in the
secret. The foreigner, after being badgered and teased for
upwards of two hours, was permitted to cross to Liverpool.
Liverpool Mercury.
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e corrected by a
ere
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sitate any interruption of ordinary duties or amusements;
on the contrary, they increase the appetite, strengthen the
organs of digestion, give increased energy and life to all the
animal functions, and fit both hand and. brain for fresh
exertions. The sick and enfeebled can easily discover what
a happy revolution these pills have the power to effect in
the human system.

THE " SPECTATOR" ON THE CALCUTTA CYCLONE.
—The English language does not contain a native
word to express the more violent forms of wind. We
have borrowed a great many since we became the
great merchants of the East, but hurricane and
tornado are Spanish, typhoon, we believe, Chinese,
though dictionaries derive it from the Greek, simoom
Arabic, and cyclone pure Greek, with a conventional
meaning imposed upon it by science. Gale means
anything, according to the speaker's idea of the
proper power of wind, blast and squall imply limited
duration, and whirlwind is restricted to the lesser
forms of circular hurricane, the waterspouts of air.
Storm is the only native word of any force, and an
Englishman's idea of a storm does not tempt him to
sympathise greatly with the sufferers from its vio-
lence. Accustomed only to the winds of the north,
which bring catarrh and consumption, but leave
wooden houses standing for years, which seldom last
many hours, and are never destructive except at sea,
his power:of imagining wind is limited, and he reads
a story like that of the catastrophe at Calcutta with
a feeling of „ray in which there is just a trace of
something like contempt. People out there must be
very weak or arrangements very bad for a mere
wind to work all that destruction, throw Lloyds'
into a panic, and impede the systole disastole of her
Majesty's foreign mails. We question whether even
after reading Lloyds' report, and the much more
graphic narrative which appeared in the Telegraph,
the average reader quite understands that an Indian
cyclone is to Indians a catastrophe like an earth-
quake, an irresistible outburst of the destructive
forces of nature before which man and man's works
are as powerless as before the breath of the Almighty,
which can be encountered only by submission, or
that resignation which while it lasts is so undistin-
guishable from paralysis. It has been the lot of the
writer to live through two cyclones, only less violent
than that of October 5, and one considerable earth-
quake, and on the whole he considers the earthquake
the friendlier manifestation of the two. It brings
your house about your ears, and suggests that the
protection of Heaven is suspended, but it gets itself
done with, and the cyclone does not. That, we take it,
is the secret of the horror with which all men
who have lived in Asia regard a genuine cyclone.
The popular theory that such a storm occurs about
once in ten years is, we believe, a mistake founded
on imperfect knowledge. It occurs every year just
after the tropical rains, but fortunately for civihze-
tion its force is not spent twice on the same spot,
except after intervals of years, sometimes of quar-
ter-centuries. The park planted by Marquis Wel-
lesley, for example, sixteen miles from Calcutta,
though now destroyed, has survived the cyclones of
seventy years, apparently though not really un-
harmed. It is only when the destruction affects
Europeans that in Asia details are known, and a
storm which destroys everything between the
Mauritius and Africa, or submerges a vast rice dis-
trict, may remain in Europe unreported. Once,
however, in every ten years some city like Calcutta,
which, though tropical in every attribute and cir-
cumstance is still not in the tropics, is included
within the sweep of the broad band of wind which
rushes, twisting itself in a spiral with twists a thou-
sand miles long, from the north-east to the south-
west, meeting fortunately nothing in its course from
Bengal, till seven thousand miles away it brushes
the white cloth off Table Mountain. .Once in about
a generation the same place finds itself near the
centre of the current, and civilisation realises for an
instant how utterly feeble it is when nature chooses
that barbarism shall reign. In Bengal there is
always a slight but significant warning of such an
occurrence being at hand. Nature suddenly sinks
to rest, the atmosphere glows with heat, every
settlement seems surrounded with a wall of rose-
coloured haze, the birds stop chirping, and the hum
of insects, which over all Asiatic deltas is as per-
manent a sound as the low roar of London is in
Cheapside, suddenly arrests itself, leaving on the
ear a sort of pain of silence. A little white cloud
comes up marching'as if self driven in the very teeth
of the breeze, a wall of dust is visible hundreds of
teet high and as even to the eye as a canvass sail,
and then the unlucky watchers know that probably
for twelve hours life and property are in the hands
of God alone. Man and animals simply crouch, con-
scious for once that even courage has become worth-
less. Even in the plains, in stations where there is no
water, such a wind is bad enough. The trees, as it rises
higher and higher, bend and twist and groan till the
roots yield to the tremendous strain, and they are
not broken but flung out of their sockets as if the
blast were wroth with their resistance, every roof
with a pitch to it goes whirling through the air,the
wooden shutters are blown in with reports like
pistol shots, and exposed to all the fury of the
tempest the Europeans wait, half maddened with
the roar of the typhoon, to see if masonry can hold
out. There are few situations on eartb, not even
waiting for the certainty of murder which Govern•
meet has forewarned you, equal to the strain such a
wind produces on the mind. It is not the storm,
the continuous volleys of bolts, rapid as the firing
during an engagement which usually accompany a
cyclone, and strike, or seem to strike, within a few
feet of every house, it is the wind, the never ceasing
rushing blast, strong as an avalanche, and, so to
speak, studded every ten minutes with gusts which
strike the walls like solid substances, which so
wear out the nerves. Europeans feel as if they
were battling with spirits, as if the slightest loss
of their own hold over themselves, the slightest
intermission in the strain of mental resistance,--
mental, for there is little to do, would destroy them.
TIIE "READER" ON SENSATIONAL LITERATURE.
—The question raised by the Archbishop of York
in his recent Charge is one which must have free
quently presented itself to the mind of anyone who
has ever examined the popular literature of the
present day. Is the tendency of the reading pro-
vided for the million good or bad ? This is the
question which the Archbishop endeavoured to
answer. Disagreeing, as we do, with the conclu-
sion arrived at by the archi-episcopal censor, we
wish to explain some of the grounds on which we
dissent from it. The subject is tee wide a one to be
exhausted in one or even in many articles ; but still
we eels show some considerations which incline us
to take a hopeful view of the influence of this class
of literature. Lit us admit that his Grace was far
from exaggerating the power of this agency. Pro-
bably it i 3 only those practically acquainted with
literature as a trade who are at all aware of the
magnitude of this popular literature. Every
now and then we see paragraphs in the news-
papers announcing the unprecedented sale of some
successful work like Macaulay's History or Tenny-
son's " Enoch Arden;" but all these bookselling
triumphs are trifling, as far as numbers go, com-
pared with those daily achieved by works whose
very names aro unknown to circulating libraries.
Semi years ago a very clever article was published
in Household Words—written, we believe, by Mr
Wilkie Collins—called the " Unknown Public."
This public has authors, classics, publishers, alike
unknown to ordinary readers. Very few, we sus•
spect, of the subscribers to Mudie ever heard of
" Woman and her Master ;" yet the author of this
work probably addressed a larger public than any
writer of our generation. There are at the present
day penny serials, never seen in drawing-rooms or
heard of in clubs, which count their subscribers by
hundreds of thousands. Between the public who
read three-volume novels and that which takes its
mental food in penny numbers there is a great gulf.
With the exception of Charles Dickens, no modern
writer has ever succeeded in attracting both sections
of the reading world ; and even his success has
been a partial one. In literature, as well as other
matters it is impossible to serve two masters ; and
whenever a writer who, like Miss Braddon, has
made his first success amongst the unknown pub-
lic, begins to rise into the notice of the upper ten
thousand of readers, he is obliged to alter his style
in a manner which alienates from him the affections
of his first love. The experiment of creating a
literature which shall attract the educated and tine
educated alike has been frequently tried and has
universally proved a failure. The Penny Maga-
zine, Good Words, and the Brittsh Workman may
be mentioned, amongst other cheap periodicals, as
having most nearly achieved the object in view;
but even the most enthusiastic admirers of these
publications must admit that they have failed in
reaching the unknown public of " Woman and her
Master." It is, we think, hopeless to expect any
sudden change in the popular taste. The million
knows well enough what it wants, and cannot be
cajoled into believing it is amused by work:- de-
signed to impart instruction. The wisest plan
therefore is to look at facts as they are, and, ad-
mitting the existence of sensational literature as an
unalterable fact, to see whether it is es great an
evil as the Archbishop of York imagines it to be.
THE "EXAMINER'' ON AN INFANT'S NECES-
SARIES.—The Daily News has some excellent re-
marks upon a decision of an Oxford jury that silk
racing-jackets, caps, and other costly and fantastic
jockey gear are necessaries of an infant, that is to
say, of a young man under age. We can imagine
no station, except indeed of a professed jockey)' in
when the racing apparcl can be a necessary, and
in this instance the infant was not heir to a for-
tune, but a young man dependent upon a mother in
easy but not sifluent circumstances, and destined to
earn his broad brfarming, the business of which
he was learning when he obtained credit for the
articles in question. Tho mother resisted the de-
mand, paying into court the prices of clothes which
might be considered necessaries, but disputing the
claim for the racing apparel as extravagant s-upr-
fluitice—but she had, unfortunately, to do with the
Oxford jury, and Oxford tradesmen have their
reason for favouring and encouraging all the ex-
travagancesof young men :at the expense of their
parents. It is a common saying for a bad character,