The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-10-02 00:00:00

VARIETIES.

Mr. F. Douglas. in his North Star, quotes the follow-
ing from an exchange paper:—" Mr. Duncan, who has a
plantation on the Alissi,,ippi river, has lost 91 negroes by
cholera. His other cattle were in usual health."

EPIGRAM.
Men, dying, make their wills; but wives
Fscape a work so sad—
Why should they make what all their lives
lhe gentle dames hove had?

A COUNTRYMAN IN LONDON.—A verdant looking
clown hailed an omnibus-driver in Oxford-street, with
" Going to Paddington ?" " Yes." said Jehu, pulling
up. " Well, so I thought," said Giles, and passed on.
Jehu was done. _ _

NEWS FOR THE " BRITISHERS."—We extract the fol-
lowing choice paragraph from the Syracuse Daily Journal
(U.S.) :—" Interesting Ride.—Mr. Chadwick, a member
of the English Parliament ! recently rode upon a pony
through twenty-three miles of the underground sewers of
London ! !"
BLUNDERING INFECTIOUS.—Mr. Charles Knight hav-
ing gone over to Ireland, to see that part of " The Land
we Live fn." and collect • materials for Part XXV.,
" Dublin and its environs," tells us of " St. Valerie, the
seat of Sir Philip Crompton, one of the most charming
places in Great Britain."
INCONSIDERATE.—" Pa," said a four-year-old. "I
think you are very inconsiderate." " Why, my child ?"
" Because you have brought that baby here whilst ma is
so ill, and you are obliged to pay a woman to take care of
it! Wouldn't it have been better to have waited till ma
wag well, and have saved the expense of the nurse ?"
Park Benjamin's new paper, The Metropolis, contains
thefollowing announcement ;—" To advertisers—We have
the pleasure of announcing that we have secured a stout,
healthy young man, who will take all medicines adver-
tised in this paper, and furnish certificates of any desired
stringency, according to price, to the proprietors."—
American paper.
PRESENCE OF MlND.—Wilkes never lost his presence
of mind, hut was always full of resources. When he was
apprehended by the king's messengers, the warrant in-
cluded Churchill, the poet. who entered the room just as
Wilkes was captured. "Thompson, my dear fellow,
(cried Wilkes, as if overjoyed to see him), they have
seized me, and the warrant includes Churchill. You are
not likely to see Churchill yourself, but if you meet any
of his friends beg of them to warn him to get out of the
way." Churchill took the hint, and after a few observa-
tions about Mrs. Thompson he took his leave, and took
care to be off pretty quickly directly he was clear of the
house.
BREACH OF PROMISE.—For the benefit of our unmar-
ri•ll friends of both sexes, to whom a right understanding
of the law may he important, we copy the following from
an opinion of Judge Black, recently affirmed by the Su-
preme Court of Pennsylvania, per Coultor, Justice,
" Dowey v. M'Millan," 8 Bsrr, 160 :—" If a man offers
to marry a woman or promises to do it, he is not bound
to comply with it, unless she agrees to accept. him. It
takes two to make a marriage contract, as well as any
other bargain. Where a man has a contract- of marriage
with a woman, and merely puts it off, and she becomes
impatient, she cannot drag him into court and demand
damages, unless she has formerly offered to perform the
contract on her part, and hedishonestly refuses, and so
puts an end to the contract, because. perhaps, he would
prefer the marriage to the suit, and he ought to have a
chance to make a choice."
OUR MELANCHOLY POETS.—Read their lugubrious
ditties, and you would think that life had utterly lost all
charm for them before they have crossed its threshold.
The cause of such overwhelming despondency it is in vain
to discover ; for none of them have the pluck, like Byron,
to commit imagintry crimes, or to represent themselves
as racked with remorse for murders which they never
perpetrated. If one of them would broadly accuse him-
self of having run his man through the vitt ls.—of having,
in an experimental fit, plucked up a rail, and so caused a
terrific accident on the South-Western,—or of having
done some other deed of reasonable turpitude and atro-
city, we could understand what the fellow meant by his
excessively unmirthful monologues. But we are not in-
dulged with any full-flavoured fictions of the kind. On
the contrary, our bards affect the purity and innocence of
the dove. They shrink from naughty phrases with in-
stinctive horror,—have an idea that the mildest kind of
flirtation involves a deviation from virtue; and, in the
most savage moments of wrath, none of them would in-
jure a fly. flow, then, can we account for that unhappy
mist which floats between them and the azure heaven so
heavily as to cloud the whole tenor of their existence ?
What makes them maunder so incessantly about gloom,
and graves, and misery ? Why confine themselves ever-
lastingly to apple-blossoms, whereof the product in au-
tumn will not amount to a single Ribston pippin ? What
has society done to them, or what can they possibly have
done to society, that the future tenor of their span must
be one of unmitigated woe ? We rather suspect that
most of the poets would be puzzled to give satisfactory
answers to such queries. They might, indeed, reply, that
misery is the heritage of genius ; but that, we apprehend,
would be arguing upon false premises, for we can discover
very little genius to vindicate the existence of so vast a
quantity of woe. We hope, for the sake of human na-
ture, that the whole thing is a humbug ; nay, we have
not the least doubt of it ; for the experience of a good
many years has convinced us, that a young poet in print
is a very different person from the actual existing bard.
The former has nerves of gossamer, and states that he is
suckled with dew; the latter is generally a fellow of his
inches, and has no insuperable objection to gin and water.
In the one capacity be feebly implores an early death ; in
the other, be shouts for broiling kidneys long after mid-
night, when he ought to be snoring on his truckle.—
Blackwood's Magazine.

A CONGO CUSTOM.—It is the custom in Congo to suffer
an interval of time to elapse between the decease and bu-
rial of members of the higher classes, proportioned to the
rank of the subject and the wealth of surviving friends.
In the meantime the body is enveloped in voluminous
folds of cotton cloth, pieces of which are weekly and al-
most daily added, so as to conceal any signs of decompo-
sition. This process goes on until the corpse attains an
enormous size. When too large for the house in which it
is contained, the building is taken down and a larger one
erected in its place. In the case of very distinguished in-
dividuals, this is frequently done two or three times; and
a fellow who, in his lifetime, never had clothing enough
to cover his nakedness, is, after death, swathed into a ca-
pital illustration of the principle of compensation—clothing
himself then, (or rather his friends doing so for him,) in
all the cloth which he was formerly entitled to but did not
have.—Kaloolah, or Journeyings to the Dje'bel Kumri.
PIC-NIC PREPARATIONS.—To give a pic-nic party a fair
chance of success, it must be almost impromptu: pro-
jected at twelve o'clock at night at the earliest, and exe-
cuted at twelve o'clock of the following day at the latest;
and even then the odds are fearfully against it. The
climate of England is not remarkable for knowing its own
mind ; nor is the weather " so fixed in its resolve," but
that a bright August moon suspended in a clear sky, may
be a lady-usher to a morn of fog, sleet, and drizzle. But
such an affair, long prepared and carefully arranged !
why is it of all the modes of human enjoyment the least
satisfactory ? and the greater the care, and the longer the
preparation, the more disagreeable is the result. The
experiment has been tried by hundreds and by thousands
on each of the fifteen or twenty days of an English sum-
mer, and invariably with the same ill success. The quan-
tum of pleasure derived has always been in an average
ratio to the pains employed to produce it. It is unwise
to draw at a long date upon a rickety firm ; and Madame
Pleasure being in that predicament, the shorter you
make your drafts the more likely is she to honour them.
—Eliza Cook's Journal.

SUPERSTITION IN CHINA.—Choa Chong Long, a well-
known Chinese merchant in Singapore. having realised a
handsome competency by trade, proceeded about thirteen
years ago to Macao, for the purpose of dying and laying
his bones in his native soil, amongst those of his ancestors.
He died a few months after his arrival ; and was buried in
one of the Chinese burying-grounds at Macao, where his
remains have since rested in peace, until lately Senlior
Amaral took it into his head to order all such remains to
be removed. One of his relatives, named Choa Kim
Sean 4, accordingly proceeded to China by the last steamer
to recover Chong Long's bones and bring them to Singa-
pore. He reached Macao in safety, found the grave un-
violated, and the bones were dug up and secured in a box
for transport.; instead, however, of accompanying them
to Hong Kong, he preceded them. A day or two after
his arrival he appeared to be labouring under very extra-
ordinary delusions, fancying that people were coming to
murder him, and evincing the greatest alarm at every
sound he heard. He insisted on leaving for Singapore on
the 24th in the steamer, although the bones had not ar-
rived, and accordingly went on board. On the third day
after leaving Hong Kong he jumped overboard, but was
picked up and brought round by the doctor, and a strict
watch placed aver him. For two days he appeared greatly
composed, but one night he was missed from his berth ;
search was made, but he could not be found, and it is
supposed that he must have again gone overboard. His
relatives here say he must have due up the bones without
first consulting an astrologer as to the propitious day and
hour for accomplishing his purpose ; that he must have
disturbed the hantu (spirit) who kept watch over the grave
on an unpropitious day, and that the hantu, being very
angry, had possessed him and driven him mad.—Singa-
pore Free Press.
ANECDOTE OF ROSLIN CHAPEL.—Near the opening of
this vault there is a large flat stone on which is engraved a
knight in armour, in a recumbent posture, his hands
closed upon his breast, on each side of his head a lion
rampant. and at his feet an animal resembling a greyhound.
This is supposed to have marked the burial-place of
Alexander, Earl of Sutherland, grandson to King Robert
the Bruce. But we shall not destroy the legendary ver-
sion of this " storied monument," which is founded on the
following account given by ancient historians :—" King
Robert the Bruce, who had contributed largely to the
growing power of the noble family of St. Clair, waa on
one occasion pursuing the chase on the Pentland Hills,
and, having on more than one occasion started ' a white
faunch deer.' which had always escaped his hounds, the
disappointed King inquired of his nobles around him whe-
ther any of them had dogs which they thought would be
more successful. No courtier had the temerity to affirm
that his hounds were fleeter than the King's, until Wil-
liam St. Clair unceremoniously said that he would wager
his head that his two favourite dogs, called ' Help' and
Hold.' would kill the deer before it should cross the
March Burn. The King instantly caught the unwary of-
fer of the knight, and betted the forest of Pentland Moor
against the life of Sir William St. Clair. All the hounds
were held up except a few ratches, or slow hounds, to put
up the deer, while Sir William St. Clair, posting himself
in the best situation for slipping his dogs, prayed devoutly
to our Saviour, the Virgin Mary, and Sr. Catherine. The
deer was soon roused, and the hounds slipped, Sir Wil-
liam following on horseback to cheer his hounds. The
hind reached the middle of the brook, upon which the
hunter threw himself from his horse in despair. At this
critical moment Hold' stooped her in the brook, and
Help,' coming up. turned her back, and killed her on Sir
William's side. The King descended from the hill, em-
braced Sir William, and bestowed upon him the lands of
Kirktnn, Loganhouse, Earncraig, &c., in free forestric.
Sir William, in acknowledgment. of St. Catherine's inter-
cession, built the chapel of St. Catherine in the Hopes,
the churchyard of which still remains." The worthy ci-
cerone, in describing the tombstone, always stated that
Sir William is here represented in the attitude of vowing
to God that. lie would never again put his life in such jeo-
pardy, his foot resting upon the neck of his dog. He fur-
ther adds that the Queen was present at the chase, and
had declared that at the fatal moment, " she wadna fine
glen a haggis and a horn spoon for St. Clair's head ;"
which shows that in the days of King Robert the Bruce,
the Queens " suppit their haggis wi' horn spoons."—
Mackie's Castles, Palaces, and Prisons of Scotland.