The hydraulic press., 1861-03-02
Mountain COrrespondence.
Mt. BoNITo; Feb. :

MT. BoNITo, Feb. 26th, 1861.
Mr.. EDITOR :-Your scribe would be pleased
through the medium of your columns, to cast into
the element of local thought, his opinion upon
the following subjects, namely Shafts Danger
GUS; Music Essential to Domestic Happiness.
Your scribe, in his humble opinion, has long
entertained the thought, that shafts, as they now
abound, in an open and abandoned condition
throughout the mining counties of this State;
should be filled up; and when the Legislature
passes law that every miner party of miners
or mining company, who may, shall or do, after
the enactment of such prohibitory law, sink
shaft or pit, and the same, when being sunk
prove OF no profit or value to the party parties
having done the same, that he or they, as the
case may be, shall, under the penalty of fine or
imprisonment, fill up said shaft or pit, or cause
the same to be filed. That honored body should
also make an appropriation to each mining coun-
ty of ten thousand dollars year, to be expended
for the filling up of all shafts and pits now
Abandoned and remaining open, and in anywise
dangerous, until all such shafts or pits shall have
been filled and rendered no longer dangerous to
should appoint a Board of haft-Examiners.
whose duty it should be to superintend the filling
OF said shafts pits, and also to extract or ex-
hume from the various shafts and pits the re-
mains of cats, dogs, hogs, Cinnamon, horses,
mules, oxen, cows, sheep, infants, boys, girls,
women and men-the latter, if any be Yankees,
may be rescusitated by feeling their pockets. The
Shaft-Examners will find many valuable animals
for which and for whom rewards have been Of
fered, and which they will be entitled to claim as
salvage! By reclaiming this zoonic matter from
the bottom of the various shafts and pits and
re-interring it nearer the surface of the EARTH
the fossilist of thousand years to come will not
present antiquarians, as to the age of the earth
and its primitive inhabitants.
Now, of music, and musical instruments.
The theory of Emusic is science; the practice
of it is an art'' And those who are skilled in
the art of instrumental music, have Superior
accomplishment added to the many artificial
ones acquirable by human genius. The wife
who can charm her humble home with sweet
strains of music from the piano or the immortal
harp, making her household happy, and wreathe
halo of contentment around it, even in the
wilderness, is sweet blessing in the house of
her earthly lord, and a medium of angelic har-
mony between heaven and earth. Yet, your
scribe has known the means of this musical
blessing to be taken from the humble home, by
virtue of an execution issued for the forced sale
of household property for debt, causing the dear
wife and mother to sigh, and the children to
mourn, that music was no more heard in their
home. This is wrong. The law should protect
and secure to every family the right to retain
among their household chattels, exempt from
forced sale, any and all musical instruments.
And your scribe would respectfully request our
honorable legislators to amend the " Homestead
and Household Exemption Law" by adding to
the list of chattels exempt from execution or
forced sale any and all instruments of music
whatsoever; and your scribe for them will ever
pray, and bless them in behalf of thousand
sweet wives and dear mothers.
Things all about here are dull; the weather
bad; the snow foot deep; the storm continu-
ing, and the spring seems afar off.
Yours, HENRY JACOB.