Stockton Herald, South Durham and Cleveland Advertiser. — 1887-11-12 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

NOVEL TEST OF AFFECTION.  Mr Archibald Stanhope—a groggy sentimentalist, residing in Buckley-street, Philadelphia—conceived the harrowing suspicion that his wife was not as passionately fond of him as a lady of good taste should be, and to put the matter to a fair trial he hit on a little stratagem, which he put in practice one day, with the results hereafter to be detailed.  He took a suit of clothes and composed an effigy of himself by stuffing the garments with a quantity of straw which had lately been discharged from an old bed. Having suspended this figure to a rafter in the garret by means of a piece of clothes-line, he ensconced himself behind a pile of rubbish in the same garret to watch the effect. After a while his little daughter came up for a skipping-rope, and caught a glimpse of the suspended figure. She ran down the stairs screaming, "Oh, mother, mother, daddy has hung himself." "Now for it, thought Archibald, in ambuscade; "we shall have a touching scene presently." 6, Hung himself ?" he heard Mrs S.— repeat, as she walked leisurely up stairs; " he hasn't got spirit enough for such a thing, or he would have done it long ago. Well, I believe he has done it, however," she continued, las she came in view of Archibald's straw representative. "Moil (to the little girl), I think he ought to be cut down. You had better go into the kitchen and get a knife, my dear, but don't go down too fast, or you might fall and hurt yourself. Stay—l forgot— there's no knife in the kitchen sharp enough. You can go round to Mr Homes, the shoemaker, High-street, he's only two squares off, and ask him to lend us his paring knife; tell him to whet it a little before he sends it. And, Molly, while you are in the neighbourhood, you can call at your Aunt Sukey's, and ask how the baby is. And, Molly, you can stop at the grocery shop as you come back, and get a pound of best moist sugar." 'Poor Archy," sighed Mrs S., when her daughter had departed; "I hope we'll get him down before the vital spark's extinct— for these buryings are very troublesome, and cost money. He wanted to put an end to himself, too; and I think I ought to let him have his own way for once in his life; he used to say that I was always crossing him. I wish he hadn't spoiled that new clothes-line—an old rope might have answered his purpose." Hare a voice which sounded like the supposed suicide's broke in on Mrs Stanhope's soliloquy with "You confounded Jezebel, I'll be the death of you !" . .  Mrs S., thinki-ng this must, of course, be a ghostly exclamation, uttered a wild scream, and attempted to escape down the narrow staircase. Archibald, starting from his place of concealment, gave chase. Mrs S. stumbled midway on the flight of stairs, and Mr S. having just reached her, and made a grasp at her dishevelled hair, as it streamed backwards, the amiable partners were precipitated to the bottom together. Both were rather badly bruised, and the cries of the lady raised the neighbourhood. Archibald was arrested for making a disturbance, and practising on the tender sensibilities of his wife. He was hound over to keep the peace in a penalty of fifty pounds, when he jocularly proposed his suspended effigy as his surety—but he found, to his sorrow," straw bail " was not accepted under the administration of Mayor Jones.