Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1882-11-02
INCONSIDERATE FRIENDS.

better than outright enemies. One can have
no peace of either body or mind while in their
presence, owing to their intolerably clumsy
way of trying to please and show their great
regard for us and ours. They believe that
none but their own ideas Of what is right and
proper-disjointed and unstable as these may
seem to us-are worthy to be accepted as ex-
emplary rules by their circles of associates.
Though they have grasped but disconnected
point in our affairs, they are ever handling
them in their own indelcate way. There is
no end to the ridiculous, unwarranted, and
wide f-the-mark conclusions they are capa-
BILE of jumping at, and their self-respect is too
feeble to prevent their public expression of the
same as undeniable truths-the outcome of
putting two and two together in the queer
way they have of doing so. And then, too,
they think we should feel tlattered and raise
our estimation of them a peg or two for their
"shrewd guessing" They are unkind and
cause much mischief, but they don't mean
it. They are too stupid and thoughtless to
realize the amount of unpleasantness they
cause by meddlng in private affairs OF which
they know nothing whatever.
If we visit these friends, after an urgent
request, in which all our conjured-up excuses
failed of their purposes, then they make every
exertion to kill us with kindness; their ex-
pressions of welcome are so prOfuse as to
make US timd we cannot feel free; every
move we make is supposed to have some SELL
timental meaning we feel that we are taking
part in tableau unsuited and unpleasant to
US; ; our every remark must be studied with
unusual care before being made through fear
of some misunderstanding arising from it.,
and we become utterly miserable where we
are supposed to enjoy ourselves Immensely.
The charm of our friendship is lost in their
nSncerity, and the constrained and false
we are forced to take.
Our hostess wants to convert us to her par
ticular whims. She doesn't realize that, an
tagonistic though they are, we may be equal
ly attached to ours. We must wear our hair
as she wears hers it will look much nicer that
way. We must not wear a plain collar II she
is partial to ruftles and ruchings. Our draper
les would be much more becoming II cut and
made up with the furbelows Of her fashion,
though her build may be the reverse of ours :;
and thus she makes us believe that everything
about us is awry, and that we are hideous at
best. We always look pale; she fears we are
quite i'll. We must write in our diary at
particular hour; it does not matter that the
inspiration of the entry we wish to make
comes ut its own will, and doesn't remain
with us to suit our pleasure She is lnvarla-
bly, catering to our taste by getting up some
extra dish which we detest with all our in
ward might. We must eat her delicious"
stewed chicken-we don't know, of course,
how delicious it is until we have tasted it
which she has prepared to tickle our palate,
even though she knows that we have been
vegetarians for many years, and that no hu-
man appetite in the community can compare
with ours for relish and consumption OF our
preferred simple diet. She is ever fusslng to
no purpose and laboring for our benefit in a
manner we can neither appreciate nor accept
joyfully. She doesn't know that the chicken
she has piled upon our plate is offensive to
our senses If she could only make us taste
the bite that she is holding on fork under
our nose we'd be sure to like it, she persists
in repeating, and we, boiling over, almost,
with impatience, wish she were no nearer us
than the man in the moon.
Upon departing, our merciless hostess doesn't
let 90 of us until she has eXacted a promise
that we will write to her Immediately upon
arriving home. Even if our journey is but
of two or three hours duration, she can not
sleep easy until she knows we got through
the ordeal safe. Her solicitude for our COM
fort is 50 enlarged upon, and it's expression
so tiresome, that we are glad to escape fllr-
ther association with her, and in the silence
Of our own simple apartments with JOY to be
free from her attentions, and at liberty once
more to be our natural self in word and deed
We may assert our right to do so when we
are in our own home, be it ever so humble !;
and it is torture beyond description to be some
peoples very welcome guests.
We write to her and tell her of "Our great
fortune to be alive" after the ordeal OF our
journey but this expression has with us one
meaning and for her another. Of course,
then there is hypocrisy on our part but how
can we help it? We are in duty bound to
write after being forced to promise an imme-
diate report of our safety, and something must
be said which is true but not offensive. We
may wait year for an acknowledgment of
our assuring missive, and it it ever does
come, we will learn that she was so glad every
thing went right with US; but our questions,
which were of some Importance to us, but
not of personal matters, or of nature to
make any one hesitate to answer them, have
been entirely ignored There is no mention
of them whatever The sheets of paper are
merely filled with Il conglomeration Of nonsen-
steal trash in which we try very hard to be in
terested; but our effort is vain.
LIGHT OF THE SKY-Captain Abney lately
read a paper before the British Association on
the light of the sky at high attitudes, based
upon observations made in the Alps on the
Riffel. at height of $500 feet. His investi-
cations proved that in high attitudes the light
of the sky diminiShes very much so as to make
photography difficult, and that is only tenth
or twentieth Of that which is found on the
surface of the earth. There was remarkable
absence of the rain band spectrum. On the
Ritfe he only saw it once, and that was du-
ring IA shower. The solar spectrum was the
1, Il IN + 10 il mot
believe that aqueous vapOr was present in the
upper regions; at all events in the form in
which it exists below In the red part of the
spectrum he found that the benZine an alcohol
which had been found to exist in the atmos-
phere actually increased in strength in the
higher regions, and he could only suppose that
benZine and alcohol are not Of terrestrial for
nation but come to us from space DR.. Glal-
sher said he had never failed up to five miles
in getting II deposition ef ptter, e.td there
was no part of the earth's atmosphere proba-
bly in which there was no aqueous vapor. AT
a height of seven miles in Il balloon he had
seen cirrus clouds still higher, and there was
a great difference between the state OF the at
mosphere in a free balloon and on mountain
side. Professor s. p Dangley, of Allegheny,
Pennsylvania, in a paper on the distribution
of energy in the solar spectrum, stated that he
had investigated the llllra-reu Specll uIl dI d
height of $1,000 feet in very dry region, and
found that it extends very much further than
had been mapped heretofore. The wave lengths
of the visible parts of the red end of the spec
trrm are only one-fourth of those in the
infra-spectrum, so that three fourths of the
energy were visible His observations proved
the existence of great gaps in the spectrum,
and he was inclined to support Abney>s con-
clusion on the existence of benzine and alcohol
in space.