The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1850-1873, 1873-09-05
Contrasted Pictures.

often with their best clothes, or covel
them up with dust cloaks. Here yor
see just what men and women will dc
when they are strangers to each othel
and meet on the common footing o1
tickets that cost the same for the facto
ry-hand, the senator, the servant, and
the millionaire. 1t is not always either
pleasant or wholesome to study human
nature; one needs to have a sound heart
and sweet temper not to be altogether
cast down by such researches above
all, one has to remember that which
they are themselves, and out of their
own conscious weaknesses excuse their
neighbors. Still I do think, after much
observation, that the woman who offers
half her seat to anosher woman with a
baby, for a long nights ride, and does
it with smile, is creature calculated
to redeem ones faith in their kind. ]
could not do it unless the baby was re-
markably handsome and very good
felt cross myself that hot October night
going from New York to Boston on the
late tram. The cars crowded, the night
foggy and sultry, the dust rising in
clouds, for the past summer had been a
long drought, and all the country looked
exhausted about us. I was not the only
cross woman either; there were dozen
at least in that car; women whose grimy
faces, bleared eyes, crumpled linen
dust cloaks, rough hair and scolding, or
fretting tones betrayed their disposi-
ton when nature was unadorned." l
was alone, so I did not scold-audibly,
but l felt certain savage satisfaction
in seeing and hearing so much COM
panion misery. The men generally
went to sleep, if they did not go into
the smoking car, and afforded extraordi-
nary spectacles to the beholder. If
there is one position above another in
which a man is not picturesque or beau
tifUl, it is with his hea thrown back,
his ugly travelling cap set on askew, his
whiskers gray with dust, his forehead
peppered with cinders, his mouth wide
open, and his manly nose uttering hor-
rid snores. Romance and sentiment
expire at the sight /; you would laugh
out il you were not exasperated, and
there arises in the mind of an ill-condi-
toned person like myself a wild de-
sire to throw something at them, or to
have a pea-shooter, and take aim at
their open cOuntenances. don't know
what l might have been led to do of
this frantic sort if my mind had not
been tranquilized at an early point of
the journey by the aspect Cf refresh
ing woman who sat acress the aisle from
me. Some women are refreshing to
look at they may not by young, nor
beautiful, nor fashionable, but they are
as pleasant as a green tree to the sight !;
something fresh, or clean, or graceful
about their dress, some cordiality and
cheer In their faces, a sort of unwordly
look like a luxuriant blossom sim
plicity, unconsciousness, peace, good
will. There was another woman in
front of my neighbor, dressed in a
travelling costume, de regte, of en-
broidered linen and finest palmetto hat
adorned with whole hay-cock of
grasses, kid gloves and elaborate satch-
ell; even her shawl was Indian, and
odors indescribable perfumed her at
mosphere, cologne and sandal-wood, ,
and amber her face was very beauti-
full, with delicate regular features, fair
skin, and large gray blue eyes with
long 1ashes brown as her hair but what
a wretched face it was, alive with in
tense self-consciousness and egotism,
miserable with disgust and discomfort,
every cinder caused look or eiacula-
ton of peevish complaint, every fresh
arrival she glared at as if the car were
her private parlor and they came unin-
vited, she did not sit in one position
five minute, and her pale, weary
mother and attentive husband tried in
vain to make her comfortable they
might have tried all her life Just as
i,o+ ---o,,1l
in heaven, and scold at the angels
wings for being in her way. But my
neighbor was a different metal. She
was lot young or handsome, she was not
fashionable or fine; her round COM
Portable face bloomed with some hardy
rose-tints yet, though she must have
been near fifty, her bright, dark eyes
were as sweet, soft and pleasant as they
were perceptive; her steel-gray hair
curled in brisk little ringlets about her
wide full forehead, and her cheerful,
sensible mouth disclosed that rare
American beauty, a set of fautless teeth,
when she smiled. She had on an hon,
est straw bonnet little out of date
but so fit and decent that you did not
remark its behind-hand syle; it was
gray and tied down with cherry
green ribbons. 1 should think that
woman repelled dust someway, for her
bonnet was fresh as lettuce after four
hours of dusty railway. She had on
no crumpled linen cloak or sack, her
dress and cape were the same soft gray
woolen material that could not crease,
and fell about her in easy folds, with
out any trimming but a little bit of silk
bordering round the cap; good capa
cious brown basket and a shepherds
plaid shawl were her only adjuncts, and
by some mysterious process she kept her
face clean and her eyes free from cinders
all the way; that woman had
" faculty" 1 liked to looked at her,
but man interviewed, slim and prim
theological student, with handbag and
a great bundle of books. However, he
own place, and my friend, whom I
found out afterward to be Mrs. Hannah
Tucker of Portland, Maine, gave him
a parting smile of relief, and expanded
herself as every railway traveller does
who is so fortunate as to occupy at last
a whole seat. She took couple of old
fashioned scolloped cookies from her
basket, red apple and bottle of milk,
and made her supper composedly as if
by her own fre-side the few crumbs
fell into her spread handkerchief, no
drop of the milk was spilled, and those
crumbs we're shaken out of the window
with the air of a table-cloth, the bottle
packed away for next time, the little
china cup wiped.on clean napkin and
put in its paper-bag, the apple-core
gingerly taken by its stem and dropped
overheard with dreadful precision then
she laid her head on the plaid shawl
and shut up her eyes resolutelv. was
glad of it, for / am always afraid of
such neat women.-ROse Terry Cooke
In a lecture delivered at the British
royal institution, Mr.. J. H. Parker
brought forward facts to show that the
opinion commonly entertained, that the
ancient Romans were ignorant of the law
in hydraulics which causes water to rise
to its level, is a popular delusicn. He
said that at every half mile of the aque-
ducts, on their course from the foot of
the hills to Rome, each aqueduct forms
an angle, to break the force of the wa
ter and at that angle great reservoir
is made, with a piscina or filtering- place
at one end. Each piscina consists of four
vaultad chambers two ahOva and two