Year: 1873

A Singular People.

 A recent traveller describes 6 state of society among singular people, which amusingly supposes that it is both civ ilized and humane. These people, he says, especially pride themselves upon their superiority to all others, and upon their triumphs in science and what they call modern improvement. Captain Gulliver does not seem to have reached them in his travels, although it is said that Dean Swift himself hoped at one time to be sent out as bishop among them; and it would appear that they are sadly in need of bishops or some other truly humanizing influence for the travellers faithful pictures of their condition show a situation which should lead the Board of Foreign Missions to lose no time in sending out missionary endorsements. There are two new and striking illustrations of the situa- tion of these people, who have not, like the Houyhnhums, the faces of animals; but what they may have for hearts, as the traveller aptly remarks, Mercy only knows"

 It is one of their customs to take 8 man who has killed another and stran- gle him with rope. They pique them selves on their science, while they re- sort to the most brutal and shocking method of suffocation. The races whom this people denounce as semi -barbarous kill their criminals with fatal certainty, and with no other shock than that which necessarily arises from violent death. This nation of high pretension In hn nf capital execution public festival, but now it has changed its custom, and is sues invitations to the strangling to a select party only. Our adventurous traveller, who congratulates himself upon having escaped safely from thelr shores, says that but a month or two since he was present at one of these ter rible scenes, and that the wretch who suffered, instead of being destroyed at once, was two or three times swung up by the neck before his life was extinct, while the invited guests, mad with the fiery liquor which is the popular drink of the country, shouted and swore in frenzy of glee, so that the ferocity of the throng in the old Coliseum when gladiators slaughtered each other, or of the Spanish crowds at bull fight when the animal disembowels the man, was tame and spiritless in the compari- son. It is but just to these people to say, says the traveller, that some of them are shocked by this traditional custom, and protest against the bung- ling horrors of such scenes. But they are derided as milksops and sentimen- tai fools who reserve all their sympa- thies for poor, dear murderers. And such is the sensitiveness of this heroic people that they are more afraid of Q sheer than of an argument. For there are men among them who put an enor- nous speaking trumpet to their mouths, fill it with their own wind and then call it's blast public opinion.

 This latest traveller also describes an- other fact about this singular people which to us, who are truly civilized, seems absolutely incredible. He says that in their cities they build enormous buildings called hotels, which rise to 8 great height and are filled with stran- gers who happen to be in the town, who are lodged in little cells arranged upon corridors, so that the whole resembles honeycomb. These structures are built of solid material in the lower sto- ries, from which escape is always easy should fire break out, and which can readily be flooded with water. But the higher parts are constructed of lighter and more infamYnable stuffs, which, should they take fire, are beyond the reach of water, and the higher you go, escape in case of danger is more and more uncertain.

 In countries of a low civilization, of course, such lofty buildings would either be really freproof, or they would be so amply provided with means of es- cape that there would be the same feel ing of security upon the roof as in the lowest rooms. But our traveller says that in one of the largest and most renown- ed of these buildings there was room in the very roof, beyond the reach of water, and accessible only by wooden staircase. The passage in which it was built was, of course, g huge roaring draught the moment fire began below. There were windows in the room coy cred with iron netting, which could not be broken. One night during his stay in the country fire began near the staircase, and swept roaring up to the roof, and eleven poor women, servants of the great house, sleeping in that cruel room, were caught, without chance of succor, and so, God help them! per ished in inconceivable agony.

 As the traveller remarks, this is kind of catastrophe which is simply unneces- sary. An honest and efficient regard for human life would make it absolute ly impossible. But, he adds, there is something ghastly in the fact that a people which permits such needless human slaughter disdains, with appa- rent sincerity, other times and coun- tries, and actually plumes itself upon it's civilization and knowledge. To us who are truly civilized and humane, and full of all wisdom, the tales of such a traveller, if we can really believe them, bring only mingled gratitude and pity. Mamma" said the good little boy, whose toes were peeping out of his shoes, "what do the poor children do who are out at elbows ?''-Editor's Easy

 C7aaiy, in Ha,per's Magazine tor Fe6-