The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1838-07-31 00:00:00

A GOOD STORY-ABOLITION

Some weeks since an itinerant lecturer of abolition visited
the ncigbourhood of Portsmouth, Ohio, and put up at a pub-
lic house with the i.tention of enlightening the minds of the
public in regard to the oppression of his dark-coloured bre-
thren and sisters, by a lecture to be delivered next day, on
the cruelty and tyranny of the whites refusing to admit the
negro to a perfect equality with themselves in all respects.
All the visitors and lodgers in the tavern were annoyed
during the day, by the impertinent conduct of the pseudo-
philanthropist, forcing his disgusting and incendiary doctrines
on every one who had sufficient patience or curiosity to listen
to him. The landlord, whose house was honoured with the
presence of the lecturer, formed the plan of experimenting
on his professions of love for " Afric's sable race." In
the evening the landlord called to him a coloured man
named Bill, who acted as ostler, or man of all work, about
the inn, and ordered him to wash himself well, put on a clean
shirt, and go to bed in a certain room which he mentioned.
Bill acted as his master directed hint, and felt considerably
" stuck up" with the sudden change of his sleeping apart-
ments, from the kitchen loft to the best room in the house,
attributed it all to the presence of his white friend, who had
taken several opportunities through the day to impress on
Bill's mind that all were equal, and that the fact of a por-
tion of society being blessed with a fairer skin, gave them no
right to claim a superiority over their less fortunate brothers
and sisters of a darker hue, and that naturally, Bill and every
other gentleman of colour, who performed the the part of
servants to the whites, had the same right to respects and
privileges as their masters. Bill saw the justness of his friend's
" equality" doctrine at once, and when called by the land-
lord, was decided in his own mind in what manner he
would propose to his master a change in the respective sta-
tion; he to assume the duties of ostler, and his employer to
take up the curry-comb and brush; " turn about's fair play,"
thought Bill. In the evening, when the lecturer wished to
retire, the landlord conducted him to his chamber, and showed
him the bed he was to occupy. After he had disrobed himself
and turned down the clothes to get into bed, he started back
with astonishment on beholding his friend Billin snug posses-
sion of one-half of it, who invited him with a familiar nod to
get in. The abolitionist cast a look of scorn on poor Bill, and
demanded of the landlord what he meant by giving him a " nig-
ger" for a bed-fellow ? Ile v.-as answered with his " equality"
argument. "Bill's person was healthy, he had on a clean
shirt, was not addicted to any ugly habits in his sleep, and
more than all, was one of the `proscribed and injured race'''
for whom the gentleman professed such ardent love; the last
consideration ought to make Bill a welcome companion to
the "lodger." The enraged philauthrophist could not stand
this practical test of his doctrine, but let loose his wrath on
the landlord:—" Sir, I tell you I will not put up with this
unparalleled indignity; who ever heard of such insolence?
putting a gentleman to sleep with a filthy nigger 1" "And
let me tellyou, Sir," replied the landlord, "that with that
`nigger' you'll have to sleep, if you sleep at all; he is as
clean in his person and clothes as you are yourself, and in
every other respect, according to your own preaching, he is
your equal, so hop in and embrace your brother, for most cer-
tainly he shall be your companion till morning." The aboli-
tionist threatened, raved, and coaxed, but all would not do;
the landlord was inexorable, he was determined to make his

lodger practise what he preached, and the crestfallen aboli-
tionist was compelled to take his place alongside of his sooty
friend, where he lay till morning, enduring feelings that can-
not be described. lie was kept in a state of continual rest-
lessness through the whole night, repelling Bill's familiarities,
and keeping the negro's woolly head out of his face. lie rose
at the dawn of day, while his comrade "all in black," with a
mind free from all the perplexing cares of life, was enjoying
"the honey-heavy dew of slumber," called for his bill and left
the town. The lecture was consequently indefinitely post-
poned. Bill related, with great importance, the distinguished
honour conferred on him, by being the bed-fellow of Mr. ,
but said the comfort is not so much to be desired, as the
" gemman kicked most almightily, and had a 'stremely bad
bref, dat, however, is 'lributable to his white extraction."—
Charleston (American) Mercury.

CIRCASSIAN WARFARE.—UnIiko Europeans, they never
fight in a line, but in bodies of about twenty or thirty at a
time,—their common practice being to fall unawares upon
the enemy, and harass them day and night during their
march. After making a charge, they disperse, then rally,
and return again to the charge, when their exhausted foe
supposes them to have fled; and as they are certain to kill
immediately, or wound mortally, those whom they hit, and
never fail to avail themselves of a good position, these cir-
cumstances combined with their desperate bravery and per.
severance, render them, perhaps, the most formidable anta-
gonists to be found in any country.—Travels in the Western
Caucasus.

STEAM-ENGINE Bon ,Ens.—The following method, em-
ployed by Captain Kennedy, commanding her Britannic
. Majesty's steamer Spitfire, to prevent the incrustations or
deposits of saline matter on the inside of the boilers of steam-
engines, has been communicated by him in a letter to M.
Gautier, of the French consulate at Malta. Captain Ken-
nedy recommends, after having well cleaned the boilers and
tubes, to coat those parts of their interior surface most ex-
posed
to the action of the fire with a mixture composed in the
proportion of eighteen pounds of melted suet and three
pounds of powdered black lead. He states, that the ad-
vantages of this application have been fully tested by expe-
rience, that the Lords of the Admiralty have resolved, that
all the government steamers shall, for the future, be provided
with a sufficient quantity of the above mentioned ingredi-
ents.—Freach paper.
THE ARABIAN KING AND POET.—A whimsical story is
told of a king who denied to poets those rewards to which
usage had almost given them a claim. This king, whose name
is not recorded, had the faculty of retaining in his memory
an ode after having only once heard it; and had a memlook
who could repeat an ode which he had twice heard, and a
female slave who could repeat one that she had heard thrice.
Whenever a poet came to compliment him with a panegyri-
cal ode, the king used to promise him, that if he found his
verses to be his original composition, he would give him a sum
of money equal in weight to what they were written upon.
The poet. consenting, would recite his ode; and the king
would say, " It is not new, for I have known it some years,"
and would repeat it as he had heard it; after which he would.
add, "And this memlook also retains it in his memory;" and
would order time memlook to repeat it ; which, having heard
it twice, from the poet and the king, he would do. The king
would then say to the poet, " I have also a female slave who
can repeat it ;" and ordering her to do so, stationed behind
the curtains, she would repeat what she had thus thrice heard:
so the poet would go away empty-handed. The famous poet
El-Asmna'ee. having heard of this proceeding, and guessing
the trick, determined upon outwitting the king; and accord-
ingly composed an ode made up of very difficut words : but
this was not his only preparative measure; another will be
presently explained; and a third was, to assume the dress of
a Bedawee, that he might not be known, covering his face.
the eyes only excepted, with a litham (a piece of drapery) in
accordance with the custom of the Arabs of the desert. Toils
disguised, he went to the palace, and, having asked permis-
sion, entered, and saluted the king, who said to him, "Whence
art thou, 0 brother of the Arabs ! and what dost thou desire?"
The poet answered, " May God increase the power of the
king! lam a poet of such a tribe, and have composed an
ode in praise of our lord the sultan."—" 0 brother of the
Arabs !" said the king, " hast thou heard of our condition ?"
" No," answered the poet; " anti what is it, 0 king of the
age?"—" It is," replied the king, " that if the ode be not
thine, we give thee no reward; and if it he thine, we give thee
the weight in money of what it is written upon."—" How,"
said El-Asma'ee, '' should I assume to myself that which be-
longs to another, and, knowing, too, that lying before kings
is one of the basest of actions? But I agree to this condition,

U our lord the sultan !" So he repeated his ode. The king,
perplexed, and unable to remember any of it, made a sign to
the memlook—but he had retained nothing; and called to
the female slave, but she also was unable to repeat a word.
" 0 brother of the Arabs !" said he, " thou bast spoken truth,
and the ode is thine without doubt: I have never heard it
before; produce, therefore, what it is written upon, and we
will give thee its weight in money, as we have promised."—
" Wilt thou," said the poet, " send one of the attendants to
carry it ?" "To carry what ?" asked the king; "is it not
upon a paper here in thy possession?"—" No, our lord the
sultan," replied the poet; "at the time I composed it, I could
not procure a piece of paper upon which to write it, and could
find nothing but a fragment of a marble column left me by
my father; so I engraved it upon this, and it liesin the court
of the palace." He had brought it, wrapped up, on the back
of a camel. The king, to fulfil his promise, was obliged to
exhaust his treasury; and to prevent a repetition of this trick
(of which he afterwards discovered El-Asnia'ee to have been
the author,) in future rewarded the poets according to the
usual custom of kings.—Mr. Lane's Notes to his New Tease-
lation of the Arabian Nights.
CONDITION OF THE LAPLANDEIIS.—The condition of the
wandering Laplander forms a singular union of real wealth
with real poverty. To support a family in the " Fjelde," a
flock of from three to four hundred reindeer is necessary.
He who possesses only from one to three hundred must de-
pend for subsistence partly on fishing in the lakes and shoot-
ing, or must betake himself to the coast, or to husbandry in

a fixed situation. The value of a reindeer is about one-third
of that of a cow : it sells for three or four dollars,* and a cow
from nine to twelve; and the meat, skin, and horns of the
one sell as readily as those of the other. A flock of <lOO rein-
deer, the minimum which can support a family, supposing
one-fourth of the number to be full grown, and the other 300
to be worth only one-third of their value, must altogether be
equal to a capital of 600 dollurs, or about £l2O. sterling. Yet
the yearly produce of this capital, Which is greater than the
value of all the property possessed by three or four families
of the working class in a civilized community, and with
which they would be far removed from want, is insufficient to
support a Laplander, even in a state of extreme privation in
which he habitually lives. This is a striking instance of the
real expense of living in that natural state, as it has been
called, or that barbarous one, in which man consumes what
he produces, and lives independent of the arts of civilized life,
its tastes, and enjoyments. The Laplander uses nothing
which he does not make for himself, except the iron pot for
dressing his victuals, and the piece of coarse cloth which forms
his tent. He consumes nothing but what his reindeer yield
him; his occasional excess in brandy, and his use of tobacco,
are not ordinary indulgences. Yet, without the tastes, and
gratifications of civilized life, or any of its expenses, the Lap-
lander, with the above capital, is in poverty, and destitute of
an assured subsistence. This shows the real expense of that
half-savage life which, from the accounts of emigrants and
travellers in America, we are apt to suppose is the least costly
of any, because it has neither comforts nor luxuries to pay
for, and produces what it consumes. The Laplander's con-
dition is the beau ideal of that sort of life. Five shillings
would undoubtedly purchase all that he uses in a year of
those articles which are not indispensably necessary forexist-
ence; vet a capital which, with their own labour, would
maintain three families in the enjoyment of the comforts and
decencies of civilized life, according to their station, does not
keep him from positive want. The Laplander, who possesses
a thousand or more reindeer, and who is consequently a man
of considerable property, lives i❑ the same way as the poor-
est, enjoys no more of the luxuries of life, and has no higher
tastes or habits to gratify. It is said that very considerable
portions of the silver currency of the country are lost, in con-
sequence of this class of Laplanders hoarding, from genera-
tion to generation, all the money they obtain by the sale of
their surplus produce; and that the spot in the " Fjelde,"
where the treasure is buried, often cannot be discovered by
heirs.—Laing's Journal of a Residence in Norway.
* The dollar is valued at 3s. 104.

INDUSTRY OF A CoNvieT.—NF.w SOUTH WALES.—Dr.
Lang, in his account of New South Wales. gives a pleasing
picture of the condition 01 an emancipated servant, on his
beginning the world after his liberation :—" I had occasion
(proceeds our author) to visit the settlement of Illawarra,
about seventy-five miles to the southward of Sydney, in the
month of April, 1830. The journey being too long for a
single day's ride, I had to spend a night by the way. The
house of a magistrate of the territory, whose cordial hospitality
1 had repeatedly experienced on former visits to the interior,
lay near my route; but, choosing rather to confer than to re-
ceive a favour, I turned aside to the little cottage of a small
settler, who I knew had arrived in the colony as a convict,
though he had been free at the time I allude to for many
years. The settler had originally been a Presbyterian from
the north of Ireland: he had enlisted in a Scotch regiment
quartered in the north of England, whither I understood he
had gone as a petty dealer or hawker. Having committed
some crime, however, of a minor character, he was sentenced
to seven years' transportation. His wife, whom he had mar-
ried in the colony on obtaining his freedom, was a native of
the south of Scotland. " I bought this farm," the settler
told me in the course of my visit, "the year I. got my liberty;
it is a thirty-acre farm—very good land, sir; and I was to
pay a hundred pounds for it, for von know it was cleared but
not stumped—that is, the roots otthe trees were left standing
in the ground. The year I got it, I only put in four acres of
wheat, for it was rather late in the season. The wheat was
very cheap last year; but the next year I put in fifteen acres
with the hoe, all with my own hands; and I had as many
bushels off it as there are days in the year, (that is, 365 bushels,
or 243 bushels per acre.) The wheat was very dear that
season, and I sold a great part of my crop at 14s. 6d.; but the
cheapest I sold was half a guinea a bushel, and I cleared my
farm that year. I lived in that hut you see till the debt was
paid, and then I built this weather-boarded house. We have
every thing comfortable now—plenty of wheat, corn, potatos,
and every thing else we require. Indeed, it's a good country,
sir, for an industrious wan. At home I would only have bad
a day's labour, and little for it, and, perhaps, not even that ;
but here I have a farm of my own, and every thing comfort-
able. I have much reason to be thankful that ever I came
here, and I hope there's forgiveness for what's past.'—ln
short, the aspect of things about the settler's little establish-
ment justified the account he had given me, both of it and
himself; and I was most happy to afford him such general
comniendation, and such pastoral encouragement, as his cha-
racter and circumstances peculiarly called for. As I had two
days' journey to perform on horseback, ere I could reach his
little cottage on my. return to Sydney, I gladly availed my-
self of his offer to supply me with a fresh horse, that my own
might be in better spirits and condition on my return; and,
in riding rapidly along on the spirited Australian steed—the
produce of sheer industry and .economy—l could not help
wishing, from the very Bottom of my heart, that a hundred
thousand families of the labouring agricultural pOpulation of
Great Britain and Ireland could be gradually conveyed to a
country in which the same industry and economy would in-
fallibly lead them to the same degree of comfort and inde-
pendence."