The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-10-24

TT is not extraordinary that people
 should consider the human heart, the \ physical muscular pump within the credness not accorded the other organs or members of the human anatomy The reason is patent. The word "heart' is employed to designate the most sacred emotions of the soul, its love. hope, fear, ambitions and all the sensations of>which the emotional nature is capable The All mighty commands, "Give me thy heart. y The little child expresses the extent of it's love by saying, q love you with all my heart' The poet when assuring her whom he loves, finds no language more suitable than the line in the German Liebe Lied,
 'Du, du liegst mir in hertzen."
 Being the fgurative seat of the affec- tions, whatever fortunate or unfortunate changes and chances befall loves career are said to have happened to the heart. So, Byron, in Don Juan, says:
 ''The heart is like the sky, a part of heaven,
 But changes night, and day. too, like the
 sky;
 Now OCT it clouds and thunder must be
 driven,
 And darkness and destruction as on high But when it hath been scorched and
 pierced and riven,
 It's storms expire in water drops; the eye Pours forth, at last, the hearts blood
 turned to tears"
 Not only is the heart copsdered the seat of the emotions, but it is figuratively used as the sphere of the intellectual fac ulties. "What the heart thinks his tongue speaks" says Shakespeare.
 Thereupon, seeing that the loftiest emo tions and thoughts are ascribed to the heart, it is not remarkable that men came to look upon the physical heart as in reality possessing the qualities figu- ratively ascrbed to it. That this dispo- stion has existed and still exists there can, be no question Often it has led to the most singular disposal of the physical heart by wills or deathbed requests.
 On October 16 1909, the Associated Press of the United States received the cable gram that follows. I omit parts of the dispatch because they referred to other subjects. It was sent from London and read:
 "A remarkable will just filed is that of the Countess d'Aubiguy d'Assay of Paris, who left some property in England as well as in France. Her will contained this curious clause: T direct that my body shall be embalmed and that my heart be cut out of my breast and sealed in a funeral urn and be placed in the Church of Courdemanche, and my funeral to be simple and without flowers"
 The news item was entitled. "A Re- marlxable will" And so 1t is. A count ess' heart cut from her breast! What Is there in the heart of countess that one by analysis will not find in the heart of her maid? Nothing. They are quite alike. They have similar orifces, valves. auri- cles. ventricles, contractile muscles. en- docardia, coronary arteries and are en- closed alike in the pericardium or heart sack and there sealed up. Had not the countess confused the functions of the figurative heart with those of the physi- ological center of the blood-vascular system? It certainly seems so.
 What is to be the future of the heart of the solicitous countess? No one can predict But 1t is likely that long before the sounding of the Angels trumpet 1t VIII have disappeared altogether. That