The Sun. — 1850-07-25 (London, England)

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 the other day, with the results hereafter to be detailed. He rook 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 ensconsed himself behind a pile of rubbish in the same garret, to watch the effect. After a while his little daughter came up after ' a jumping-rope, and caught a glimpse of the suspending 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." " Hung himself ?" he heard Mrs. Stanhope repeat, as she walked leisurely upstairs ; "he hasn't got pluck enough for such a thing, or he would have done it long ago. Well, I believe he has done it, however," she continued, as she tame in view of Archibald's straw representative. "Moll," to the little girl, " I think he ought to be cut down. Tim 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, Sixth-street, he's only two squares off; and ask him to lend us his paringknife ; 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'e, and ask how the baby is. And, Molly, you can stop at the grocery store as you come back, and get a pound of sevencent sugar. Poor Archy I" sighed Mrs. Stanhope, 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 acrossing him. I wish he hadn't spoiled the new clothes-line—an old rope might have answered his purpose." Here a voice, -which sounded like that of the supposed suicide, broke in on Mrs. Stanhope's soliloquy with, "You confounded Jezabel, be the death of you!" Mrs. Stanhope, thinking 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. Stanhope stumbled midway on the flight of the stairs, and Mr. Stanhope having just reached her and made a grasp as 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 recognized in 200 dollars, and jocularly proposed his suspended effigy as his surety ; but he found, to his sorrow, "straw hair was not acceptable under the administration of Mayor Jones.—Pennsylvanian.