The Wellington enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 1867-188?, 1882-04-05
NUMBER %.

unintelligible as to comprehension to be
deemed other than the deepest wisdom.i
Here she is, poor thing, with her notej
book and pencil, her parchment-hued
complexion, her well-worn bombazine.
her ringlets in wormlike convolutions,
her lank and bony form painfully sug-
gestive of the nearness of all parts of her
skeleton to her skin-that skeleton and
that skin and all the rest SO strangely
kept alive, when for her there is SO little
to live on. Maybe she is also making
fame" for somebody-fame which may
last hundred years. s..i e..7a
BONES, STONES AND MUMMIEs.
Other great rooms are full of bones
and stones and supposed wisdom in
bones and stones. Mummified animals
taken from Egyptian eatacombs, es-
pecially cats; scores and scores of glass
Jars full of mummified cats, or what
once were cats, now all fallen to pieces,
and bones of cats, skins of cats, claws of
ancient cats and embalming rags of cats
feline skulls, ribs, rags and dust all in
Other damp halls holding Egyptian
mummies, some quite perfect in their
painted cases, some decayed, with skele-
ton hands and great and little toe bones
turned up and sticking out of the burst
and tattered cerements.
Some of the halls abound plentifully
in Egyptian stone coffins, ransacked
from their graves and carried over the
coffin may be 1000 years hence by some
curious race whose reading of English
history may be condensed to q page full
of dates. Some of these collins weigh
tons. 1t must have taken contractor
to undertake an Egyptian funeral. I
suppose when the relatives took their
last look of the dear departed mummy,
they put up the shears over the house,
took off the roof and let down thou
sand or so pounds of stone lid. Then
the gearing was made fast to the three
ton stone box itself, and SIX or eight
yoke of oxen outside were put to the
hoisting apparatus, and very slowly, at
the rate of an inch a minute, the sarco-
phagus went up out of the room before
the eyes of the mourners. At this rate
it must have taken week to get it TO
the cemetery. The funeral pace of to-
day is horse race to that of the ancient
Egyptians. But what delusion was
theirs to think they were holed for all
eternity. Here they are in land un-
known in their time, and peeped over
and into by mighty race, some OF
whose Representatives from Yorkshire -
they twist their necks over the sides re-
mark: Oh, say Bill. Wot 'og trough
this ere would make, .eh?'' Poor desc
Grated Egyptl
MUSEUM ATTENDANTS.
And this is the British Museum att
tendant. One guardian to each room.
Generally sits on a bench and sleeps.
Or wanders about betwixt sleeping and
waking. Carries in his hand wand
like billiard cue. Symbol of authority to
poke trespassers and disturbers- Seems
to prop him up while sleeping on his
bench. Ditto while sleeping on his feet.
don't mean to say that the poor man
sleeps q healthy, legitimate sleep. His
eyes are generally open, and his other
senses about half awake. It's the con-
dition to which his tiresome, tedious,
monotonous employment reduces him.
He has nothing to do but TO stay in these
great, damp halls and watch these dead
things. Bones and stones. All the days
of his life are SO passed, save Sundays,
amid dead bones and stones, mummies,
coffins and dead and stuffed elephants,
lions, tigers, rhinoceroses, giraffes, hye-
mas and all other beasts and all other
birds and bones of dead mammoths, and
all these dead things all his life long
staring at him out of their bony eye
sockets, or worse. out of glass eyes,
those sad limitations of natural optics.
This is bad enough, but it is not all, nor
the worst. Besides the dead beasts,
birds and fhummies, these hells OF
stuffed and bony deafness are filed by
visitors hundreds of them. The Brit
ish public from the country who must
"do" the Museum before they leave
town and die. Here they are, coming
and going, wandering hopelessly and
despairingly about these greet, gray,
damp halls, taking death-colds and
peeping at the cases full of dead things
empty Egyptian coffins, and wondering
where the wisdom of it all is, and
where they get it out, and getting hour
ly more tired, cold, hungry, sleepy, de-
pressed and disheartened at the sight
of so much stuffed. staring, lifeless
deadness, and going round and round,
from one hall to another, and getting
lost and getting into the same room
egain and staring into the same cases
full of stuffed deadness, which stares
back at them, and wondering and long
ing how and where they're ever to get
out of this vast and wonderful place,
and wishing they were out, and getting
out at last and away from so much stuff
ing, bones, dust and rot, and glad to
get anywhere, especially into the near
est public house, and there to call for q
sstwo gin hot' to take the taste of all
this Britism- Museum deafness out of
their mouths and the damp out of their
bones. -
But the guardian with the billiard-cue
he must stay. He sees and feels all this
deadness and live misery about him and
it kills him, yet he lives on for years
Prentice Mutord, IN San francisco
Chronicle.
~ Americans desiring aristocratic