Title: The Rural Magazine, and Literary Evening Fire-Side, Vol. 1 No. 7 (1820)
Author: Various
Language: English
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       *       *       *       *       *



  THE

  RURAL MAGAZINE,

  AND

  LITERARY EVENING FIRE-SIDE.

  VOL. I. PHILADELPHIA, _Seventh Month_, 1820.  _No. 7._



FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE.

THE VILLAGE TEACHER.


Among the smooth faced urchins that were subject to my little
kingdom about fifteen years ago, was a tall awkward boy, named
Jonathan Gull. Jonathan was the son of an honest hard working
farmer, who lived about two miles from the village, and who had
by dint of frugality, acquired some property, and with it a
proportional degree of consideration in the eyes of his neighbours.
His crops of wheat were generally large, and he made a journey to
the metropolis once a year, to dispose of his grain and produce.
On these occasions his wife and a grown up daughter would usually
accompany him to see the city and to buy cheap goods. It did one's
heart good to witness the return of the honest farmer--the smile of
self-complacency with which he greeted the members of his family,
and the eagerness with which he inquired respecting the farm, Old
Roan, and the young colt, and brindle, the cow, and the litter of
young pigs; and the air of importance which he assumed towards his
neighbours, who thronged around him to hear the latest news-what
Boney was doing--the yellow fever--and the price of wheat. His
hearty greeting of his acquaintance; the animation which sparkled
in his sunburnt face; his short thick set figure, decked out in a
suit of homespun grey, with large brass buttons; his arms a kimbo;
and the broad burst of merriment, that, amidst the discussion of
graver subjects, occasionally broke forth at some sly turn, or
second hand joke of the traveller; altogether formed the beau ideal
of homely rustic happiness, and prosperity. Nor was the greeting and
excitation less on the part of the wife and daughter. As the wagon
was emptied of its load, treasure after treasure met the eyes of the
delighted group of children and neighbours. Here were a new set of
milk pans, and a churn for the dairy; a dozen of pewter spoons, as
smooth and as bright as silver, and scrubbing brushes, and knives
and forks to repair the waste of years. There glittered lots of new
calico, as fine as red and yellow could make them; papers of pins
and needles, and all the sundry articles which complete the stock
of an industrious housewife; while in another place were cautiously
hid, lest they should excite undue envy, the silver teaspoons and
teapot, and the bundles of coffee and tea and white sugar, together
with the tortoise shell combs and gold ear-rings which the good
natured husband had been importuned to buy. Let not the reader
turn away with contempt from this simple picture; the event was an
important one in the family of farmer Gull, and supplied it with a
stock, not only of necessities and luxuries, but of conversation
and pleasure for a full season. But alas! in the train of all this
prosperity and gladness marched the forerunners of decay. Farmer
Gull's heavy purse of shining dollars had won the heart of many a
knight of the counter, and many were the plans laid to obtain a a
closer intimacy with their owner. Here Mrs. Gull was invited to sit
down in the parlour to rest herself; and there was she pressed to
stay to tea. One talked to her about her butter and her cheese, and
another about her rosy faced children. In short, it so happened,
that in the course of a few years, she had at least half a dozen
acquaintances in the shopkeeping line, each of whom were under
engagement to spend a short time during the Dog-days at Melrose;
for so was the farm now styled. With these new acquaintances, new
views and expectations filled the minds of the wife and daughters.
The old family Bible and the Pilgrim's Progress were less frequently
read and quoted; the calico short gowns in which they used to visit
their neighbours of a summer evening gave place to dresses of silk
and white muslin, and their talk was now of the fashions and the new
novels. Among other changes it was determined to make a merchant
of Jonathan, and a place was accordingly engaged for him with the
particular friend of the family, Mr. Seersucker.----I was struck
with the appearance of the lad when he came to bid me good bye
and take his books from school. He was dressed in a suit of tidy
homespun, made up by the hands of his mother and sisters, and which
was, from the sheep that furnished the wool to the thread with which
the garments were sewed, the produce of his father's farm. The good
old fashioned notions of domestic industry were not then extinct.
Our farmers had not then found that it was cheaper to keep a family
of strapping daughters idle at home, and send the wool to one
factory to be carded and spun, and to another to be wove and dyed,
and then to a fop of a tailor to be made up into coats, than to have
the cards, the wheel, and the loom at their own fire-side; giving
wholesome occupation to their family, enlivening the gloomy hours of
winter, and cementing by good humour and mutual assistance the ties
of family and kindred. We had not then found out the grand modern
secret of economy; that it is better to pamper a few inordinate
manufacturing establishments, with all their consequences, of a
degraded and dependant population and high taxes, than to let every
individual pursue his own interests, and to encourage that best
of domestic manufactures where the workshop is the kitchen of the
farmer, and his wife and children the contented and uncorrupted
labourers.

But I find myself perpetually digressing from my story, and must
bid a truce to these rambling thoughts. Jonathan, as I was saying,
was tidily dressed; his hair was combed smooth on his forehead,
and hanging long behind, and the awkwardness of his figure, was
scarcely apparent in the expression of good health and contentment
that animated him. It soon became apparent, however, that citizen
Jonathan would not long be contented with his homely garb. At his
first visit home I observed that he had been in the hands of a
fashionable hair-dresser, who had given him the true Bonapartean
topknot. His shirt collar was stretched up till it half covered
his ears and cheeks, and he sported a clouded and twisted cane,
while the remainder of his dress was yet unchanged. By degrees the
exuvia of the clown fell off, as I have seen a snake in the spring
slowly emerge from the shrivelled skin which she has cast, or as
a locust may sometimes be seen breaking through his faded coat
of mail and sporting in gaudy robes of green and gold; or as you
may observe in the ponds a kind of doubtful animal, half frog and
half tadpole. Jonathan became in a year or two the admiration of
all the neighbouring milk maids, and was universally accounted a
fine gentleman. He had not be sure ciphered further than Practice,
and was but a dull hand, when a boy, at Murray's grammar; but so
wonderfully had a city life sharpened his wits, that his old master
himself was quite in the back ground when Jonathan was present; he
poured forth such a torrent of words and discoursed so fluently
about politics and trade and great men. Then came the days of
delusion and speculation. Jonathan was now of age, and as he had
what was called a good turn for business, and a strong back to
support him, he was solicited to engage in trade. A partnership was
accordingly formed, and "GULL, SNIPE, & Co." glittered in golden
capitals across Market Street. A capital of some thousands was paid
down, while goods to the amount of hundreds of thousands were bought
and sold.

In the meantime farmer Gull was floating on the very spring tide of
prosperity. His wealth, which was yearly increasing, gave him great
weight in the neighbourhood; he was made overseer of the poor, and
there was a talk of sending him to Congress. When that ill starred
measure which created at a birth a swarm of banks, more greedy and
more lean than Pharaoh's kine, was adopted, farmer Gull partook of
the delusion. He was made a director of the bank of Potosi, which
was located in our village, and from that moment gave himself up to
dreams of imaginary wealth. He stocked his farm with merino sheep,
at an average of fifty dollars a head, and calculated that in six
years he should double his money. Six years have elapsed, and farmer
Gull's whole flock will not now sell for the cost of a single ewe.
He mortgaged his farm to the bank, that he might buy a neighbouring
property, and prosecute some expensive improvements in the way of
mills and factories. At home every thing was changed. Mistress Gull
rode to church in a handsome carriage, which Jonathan had sent up
from town; and Polly and Biddy, instead of being at the milk pail by
sunrise, lay abed till breakfast time and then came down with pale
and languid countenances, and their hair buckled into "kill-beaus"
and "heart breakers," to partake of coffee which unnerved their
system, and rendered them feverish and nervous till dinner time.
Why should I proceed with my story? The sequel may be read in the
present circumstances of many a once thriving family. The lean kine
of Simon devoured his fat kine, and distress and confusion covered
the face of the country. Gull, Snipe, & Co., after a few years of
fictitious prosperity, and proportional extravagance, went the way
of half Market Street. Farmer Gull was their security, and had to
make heavy payments to the bank. His own speculations had proved
ruinous, the clouds became continually darker and thicker around
him, and have at length burst upon his head. His whole property
is insufficient to pay the mortgages, and his stock and furniture
will be sold next week by the sheriff. Such is the termination of
farmer Gull's career. His family is incapacitated for its present
destitute situation, and has lost the inclination and the power of
being frugal: he himself, I observe, bears his troubles with an
appearance of unusual fortitude. He preserves his cheerful spirits,
and has become the life of a circle of embarrassed farmers that
frequent a tavern opposite the window of my study. I see him there
daily--sometimes to be sure moody and disconsolate, but more often
leading the chorus of some Bacchanalian song, or retailing the merry
jests of some quondam acquaintance, of a lawyer, or bank director.
Alas! for my countrymen;--when shall we see again the days of
honest dealing, sturdy frugality, unsophisticated manners, and
household industry?



FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE.

THE DESULTORY REMARKER.


No. VI.

    I've felt full many a heart-ach in my day,
      At the mere rustling of a muslin gown,
    And caught some dreadful colds, I blush to say,
      While shivering in the shade of beauty's frown.
    They say her smiles are sunbeams--it may be--
    But never a sunbeam would she throw on me.

It has been said by a writer, whose genius and scholarship are in
the highest degree honourable to his country, that our Parnassus is
fruitful only in weeds, or at best in underwood. Notwithstanding the
general correctness of this assertion, a modest wild-flower now and
then delights the eye, and points that rainbow adventurer HOPE to
the brilliant future; in which some master of song shall disclose in
a broad and clear light,

  _Such forms as glitter in the Muse's ray._

American literature, it must be admitted, is comparatively feeble
in many of its branches; but while the names of FRANKLIN and RUSH,
DENNIE and BROWN, of WALSH and IRVING, are remembered, it is
entitled to the respectful consideration, even of foreign criticism.

The extract given above is made from a writer, who has furnished
some evidence of poetic talent in sundry occasional playful pieces,
published originally in the New York Evening Post, under the
signature of CROAKER & Co. However unprepossessing may be the name
which he has chosen to assume, his notes instead of reminding us, as
might be inferred, of the frog or the raven; at times successfully
rival those of the favourite songsters of the grove. From this
stanza, we learn that the author is a BACHELOR; who like too many
of his brethren, delights to dwell on the fancied cruelty of the
fair; and to pour the unheeded complaints of his sorrows on the
dull and listless ear of indifference. To this portion of society,
little commisseration is extended from any quarter; and the general
sentiment is responsive to that contained in the following couplet
of POPE:

    _Let sinful bachelors their woes deplore;
    Full well they merit all they feel and more._

Unpopular as such a doctrine might appear, this condition of life
has had its advocates and defenders. Amongst these may be placed
that truly great man, the eloquent and accomplished apostle PAUL.
When adverting to this subject, he discovers something of an
unsocial disposition where he says, "For I would that all men were
even as myself."[1] "But I speak this by permission, and not of
commandment," says he, as if fearful that speculative opinion might
be received from the weight of his character as authority perfectly
valid and conclusive. DRYDEN has asserted, that "a true painter
naturally delights in the liberty which belongs to the bachelor's
estate." However specious this position may appear, the liberal arts
are more indebted to the charities of life, and to the influence
of female excellence, than the author of such a sentiment would be
willing to admit. A vivid perception of physical and moral beauty,
delicacy of feeling, and intellectual refinement, are indispensably
requisite in the artist who aspires to eminence in his profession.
Nothing has a more direct and efficient tendency to promote elegance
and correctness of taste than the society of enlightened and
polished females. The absence of care is another immunity which the
BACHELOR is said to enjoy; but this as well as other assumptions in
his favour, but serves to illustrate the fact, that on almost any
subject whatever, to use the language of Sir ROGER DE COVERLY, much
may be said on both sides."

  [1] 1 Cor. chap. 7.

In all ages there have been from various causes, a formidable array
of individuals of this class. The circumstances connected with the
present times are, unfortunately, well calculated to increase their
number. To the usual disastrous consequences produced by "beauty's
frown," the disappointments and gloomy prospects in business, deep
rooted habits of idleness and extravagance, by which the present
period is peculiarly distinguished, may also be added. Active
industry, frugality, and temperance, should be sedulously cultivated
as moral virtues; having a most important agency in augmenting the
stock of individual, social, and political happiness. But unamiable
and repulsive as the character of a BACHELOR may too frequently be,
is it necessarily so?

Can he contemplate the condition of childhood, surrounded with the
pallid spectres of poverty, and shooting forth luxuriantly into all
the noxious forms of ignorance and vice;--can he walk our streets or
wharves when his ear is saluted with their lisping imprecations;--or
witness their utter disregard of the duties which appertain to the
Sabbath,--without seriously interrogating his own bosom--In what way
can any exertions of mine improve their condition, and promote their
true interests?

Can he behold the increase of intemperance and crime in all the
ramifications of society, without feeling the influence of those
sacred ties which bind him to that community of which he is a
member; and without resolving to use all diligence to arrest their
further extension, so far as his influence and example may reach?

Can he listen with unconcern to the cries of oppressed humanity, and
view without emotion, those objects of wretchedness which almost
daily present themselves in the most affecting shapes, and forget
the intimate relationship, and the reciprocity of duties which exist
between every branch of the human family, and the justice and force
of the claims of distress upon every generous and sympathetic heart?

He can no where in the moral or physical economy of the world, find
an example of existences which are independent of all connection
with the present, past, and future. The universe has been with great
propriety compared to a complex machine, "a stupendous whole," every
part of which has its relative and proper function to perform, and
discord and confusion are the consequence of each irregularity of
movement.

    From Nature's chain whatever link you strike,
    Tenth, or ten thousandth breaks the chain alike.

It should be the business of _every one_ to cultivate such
sentiments as those which are contained in the extract below,
given from a work[2] which the celebrated DUGALD STEWART declared
when presenting a copy of it to one of our countrymen, now a
resident of Philadelphia, to be the finest piece of composition in
the English language: "_That to feel much for others, and little
for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our
benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature;
and can alone produce among mankind that harmony of sentiments and
passions in which consists their whole grace and propriety._" Even
a BACHELOR, actuated by principles of this character, might emerge
into the character of a worthy, useful, and amiable man! ☞

  [2] "Theory of Moral Sentiments," by ADAM SMITH, author of the
  "Wealth of Nations."



Extracts from C. E.'s Common-Place Book.


     _Cheap food for horses, from M'Arthur's Financial Facts, 8vo. p.
     258._

The author lived in London and kept three horses which he fed as
follows.

Two trusses and a half of clover or meadow hay cut and mixed with
four trusses of wheat, or barley straw, when cut up, make nearly
equal quantities in weight; two heaped bushels of this mixture equal
to fourteen pounds weight, are given to each horse in twenty-four
hours, being previously mixed with half a peck of corn, (in England
oats) ground or chopped, weight 5_lbs._ with water to wet it; that
is, 7 pounds of hay; 7 pounds of straw; 5 pounds of meal; given at
six different times, each day and evening. Add 5 pounds of hay at
night, makes 24 pounds to each horse in twenty-four hours; and it
kept them much fatter than with double the corn each day unground,
two trusses of hay a week.

An ox, unworked, eats about 32 pounds of meadow hay per day.

An ox at work eats 40 pounds a day.

If fed in the stable each head of horned cattle will eat 130 pounds
green clover just cut, or 30 pounds clover hay a day.

At work, 3 horses eat in all, 48 stones a week of hay, also 48
quarts of oats a week each horse.

At work 18 horses in 12 days, eat 430 stones of hay, which is 14
stones a week for each horse, also 64 quarts of oats a week for each.

An idle horse eat 14 stones of hay a week and no corn.



_Native Grape Vine._


  AUGUST 22, 1807.

In the garden of Joseph Cooper, Esq. of New Jersey, just opposite to
Philadelphia, is one grape vine which with its branches, covers 2170
square feet of ground. On this one vine are now grapes supposed to
be forty bushels, and probably much more. It produced last year one
barrel of wine, which was made without sugar, and is judged to be
quite as good as Madeira of the same age, by a man brought up in the
Madeira wine trade. Under this vine the ground produced a good crop
of grass this season. It is a native American vine, transplanted
from that same neighbourhood.[3]

  [3] A short time before the decease of this very respectable
  agriculturalist, I had the pleasure of a visit from him, I believe
  in the year 1815; when I remarked, I had heard much about his
  celebrated vine from other people, and I now wished some account
  of it from himself. He informed me, (and I put his statement in
  writing) that the year previous, he had taken from this vine 40
  bushels of grapes, which weighed 2000_lbs._, from which was made
  upwards of 100 gallons of wine, the pure juice of the grape; without
  either water or sugar, or any admixture whatever. The vine and its
  branches covered the eighteenth part of an acre. Now according to
  our friend C. E.'s mode of calculation, which is rather too sanguine
  for practical men, if an eighteenth part produce 100 gallons, a
  whole acre of course would produce 1800 gallons. It continues to
  flourish, and bore last year the usual quantity of grapes. Though
  this is an extraordinary vine, and has received more attention than
  could be given to any large number by a common sized family, yet it
  evidently shows the cultivation of this description of vine might be
  made productive.

  Every farmer in the middle and southern states might, if he chose,
  have such a vine; or at least ten or more smaller ones, which would
  yield as much, and without any material expense. If this were the
  case, wine would be so plentiful and so cheap, that every labouring
  man might have it as a pleasant, cheering and invigorating beverage,
  and would do more to extinguish the hateful vice of drunkenness than
  perhaps any other agent within our control.

  This sentiment is corroborated by the fact, that in the vine
  countries of France, where weak wines are as abundant as cider,
  in a plentiful season in Pennsylvania, and where all, poor and
  rich, drink of them freely, there is comparatively no drunkenness.
  The writer of this note, some years ago, travelled in France in
  different directions about 1200 miles; and took notice in the
  whole journey of but two drunken men, and excepting three or four
  instances, always had his accommodations at an inn, the most likely
  place to find intemperance. As you go northward into the colder
  countries of Holland and the north of Germany, where the vine cannot
  be cultivated but with great difficulty, and wine is too high priced
  to be commonly used, you may observe the progress of drunkenness
  almost by the degrees of latitude. Immediately previous to this
  journey in France, I spent several months in Germany, where I drank
  coffee regularly twice a day, and was afflicted almost daily with
  headach. In France, where I seldom used coffee, but frequently weak
  wine at breakfast, as well as at other times, I had no headach.
  Should this be generally the effect, it would be another reason
  in favour of cultivating the vine in the United States. I am no
  friend to wine bibbers, nor would I be willing to encourage in the
  remotest degree the use of inebriating liquors, but I should like
  very much to see a vine such as Joseph Cooper's on every farm in our
  country.--ED.

If 2170 square feet produced 32 gallons, then one acre which is
43,560 square feet would produce about 20 barrels, or 640 gallons
but allowing space for avenues, say about 15 barrels, or 480 gallons.

It is expected that the crop of grapes for 1807 will produce much
more than those of 1806.

  One acre yielding 480 gallons,
  at $1.00, is - - - $480.00
  at $1.50, is - - - $720.00

This holds out a profitable culture to farmers.

  C. E.



TO THE EDITORS OF THE RURAL MAGAZINE.


The "_Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture_," at a late
meeting, passed a resolution to recommend the use of Malt Liquors,
in preference to Ardent Spirits, on farms;--and appointed the
subscribers a Committee to procure and publish Directions to enable
Farmers to Brew Beer.--They have accordingly the pleasure to send a
pamphlet published by the proprietors of a patent English brewing
apparatus, which was imported by a gentleman of Philadelphia; and
also some directions by an eminent brewer, to enable families
to brew beer with the common household utensils. The apparatus
was tried last year by one of our members, and found to answer
perfectly.--It was imported with the view to general utility, not to
private profit, and we understand may be purchased at first cost.[4]

  [4] The Editors will direct where it may be seen.

    RICHARD PETERS, }
    JAMES MEASE,    }
    ROBERTS VAUX,   }
    ISAAC C. JONES, } _Committee._

    _Philadelphia, June, 1820._



DIRECTIONS FOR BREWING

_With Needham & Co.'s Patent Portable Family Brewing Machine._


As the attainment of good Malt Liquor greatly depends upon the
quality of the materials from which it is produced, it may be useful
to give a few general instructions for distinguishing the quality of
malt and hops, of which it should be only composed; but considerable
practice being requisite to form a ready judgment, it will generally
be more safe to buy them of some reputable dealer.

MALT.--To judge of the quality of malt, you must chew it, and if
_sweet, tender, and mealy, with a brisk full flavour_, it is good;
in coloured malt particular care should be taken that it is neither
smoky nor burnt.[5]

  [5] Malt, previous to being ground, should be passed through a
  screen, or sieved to remove the dust.

HOPS should be of a _bright colour, free from green leaves, of
a quick pungent smell, and glutinous quality_, which will be
discoverable by their adhering together, and by rubbing them in the
hands. _New hops are preferable to old, after Christmas._

_To Brew Ale with Table Beer after, from the same malt and
hops._--The malt should be pale, sweet, and tender, ground coarse,
and the hops of a pale bright colour and glutinous quality.

If the ale is for present use, 3/4 of a pound of hops to each bushel
of malt will be sufficient, but for store ale use one pound per
bushel.

[Illustration: brewing equipment]

The machine being placed ready for use as described in the plate,
figure G,[6] put into it as much cold water as will cover the
perforated bottom of the extracting cylinder, and light the fire;
then put as much coarse ground malt into the perforated cylinder,
(see the plate, figure D,) as will three parts fill it, taking care
that none goes into the centre, (which centre should be covered,
(_but only_) while putting the malt in, and when mashing the malt,)
nor any between the cylinder and boiler.--The malt being put in,
pour through the centre as much more cold water as will just cover
the malt, then make the fire good, and in one hour after stir the
malt well up with a strong mashing stick, for about ten minutes, so
that every particle of malt may be divided from the other: let the
heat increase to 180 degrees, which you must ascertain by holding
the thermometer a minute in the centre part of the machine, and
when at 180 degrees of heat, stir the malt again, and after this
second stirring, try the heat, and if then at 180 degrees, damp the
fire well with some wet ashes to prevent the heat of the mash from
increasing, and in 3 hours and a half from the time of lighting the
fire, draw off the wort very gently that it may run fine, and put it
into one of the coolers, and put all the hops (rubbing them through
your hands to break the lumps) on the top of the wort to keep it
hot till the time for returning it into the machine for boiling;
having drawn off this ale wort, put into the machine through the
centre as much more cold water as will cover the grains, brisken the
fire, and in half an hour stir up the malt for about ten minutes,
and make it 180 degrees of heat as quick as you can, then damp the
fire to prevent its getting hotter, and in one hour and a half from
the time of putting in the water, draw off this table beer wort
gently, that it may run fine, and put it into the other cooler, and
cover it over to keep it hot until the time for returning it into
the machine for boiling; having drawn off this table beer wort, if
you wish to make a third wort, put in as much more cold water into
the machine as you think proper, and make it 170 degrees of heat
as quick as you can, and draw it off in about an hour after, and
put it to the last drawing off, or wort: then take the grains out
of the cylinder with a hand shovel as clean as you can, and after,
take out the cylinder,[7] and with a birch broom and a little water
rince out the boiler clean, and put back the perforated cylinder
into the boiler, and then put the first drawing off or ale wort,
with all the hops, into the machine cylinder where you have taken
the grains from, and cover the machine, but be sure the centre cover
is off; make it boil as quick as you can, and let it boil well one
hour, then damp the fire and draw it off into a cooler or coolers,
which should be placed in the air where it will cool quick. Having
drawn off this ale wort, return the second drawing off, or table
beer wort, with the third, into the machine to the hops left from
the ale wort, stir up the fire and make it boil as quick as you can,
and let it boil well one hour, then put out the fire and draw off
the wort, and put it into a cooler placed in the air to cool quick;
when the worts in the coolers are cooled down to 70 degrees of heat
by the thermometer, put the proportion of a gill of fresh thick
yeast to every 9 gallons of wort in the coolers, first thinning the
yeast with a little of the wort before you put it in that it may
the better mix; and when the ale wort is cooled down to 60 degrees
of heat, draw it off from the coolers with the yeast and sediment,
and put it into the machine boiler (the machine boiler having been
previously cleared from the hops and cylinder,) which forms a
convenient vessel placed on its stand for the ale to ferment in,
which must be kept fermenting in it with the cover off until the
head has the appearance of a thick brown yeast on the surface, an
inch or two deep, which will take 3 or 4 days;[8] when the head has
this appearance, draw off the beer free from the yeast and bottoms
into a clean cask, which must be filled full,[9] and when done
working, put in a handful of dry hops, bung it down tight, and stow
it in a cool cellar. This ale will be fit to tap in 3 or 4 weeks.

  [6] The smoke pipe, with an upright elbow, about 3 or 4 feet, must
  be placed on the projecting neck of the fire-place, and with a
  return elbow convey the smoke through a hole, cut in the brick flue
  to receive it; by this method the fire will draw well.

  If any smoke should come from between the boiler and fire-place, a
  little dry sand being dropped into the cavity will prevent it.--When
  the brewing is over, take off the smoke pipe and shake out the soot,
  which will ensure the fire drawing lively the next brewing.

  [7] If the machine is large, the perforated cylinder has four
  handles for the purpose of easy taking it out and in by a pulley and
  rope suspended over its centre at a proper height.

  [8] If the temperature of the weather is below 55 degrees of heat by
  the thermometer, it will be better to place your fermenting vessel
  in a situation not exposed to the cold; the cellar where you keep
  your beer in would most likely be a good and handy place for this
  purpose.

  [9] If the cask intended for the ale, should not be full, fill it up
  from your table beer, or if more than enough, put the remainder to
  the table beer; but this mixing you must regulate according to the
  strength you want your different sorts of beer.

The second wort for table beer should be put from the coolers with
yeast and sediment into an upright cask, with the cover off or top
head out, at not exceeding 60 degrees of heat, and as soon as you
perceive a brown yeast on the surface, draw it off free from the
yeast and bottoms into a clean cask, which must be kept filled full,
and when done working, put in a handful of dry hops, bung it down
tight, and stow it in a cool cellar. This table beer will be fit to
tap in a week, or as soon as fine.

_To make Table Ale._--Mix the first and second worts together, and
ferment, and treat it the same as the ale.

_To Brew Porter or Brown Beer, with Table Beer after, from the same
Malt and Hops._--Use pale and brown malt in equal quantities, ground
coarse; and strong brown coloured hops of a glutinous quality. If
the beer is for present draught, 3/4 pound of hops to each bushel
of malt will be sufficient, but if intended for store beer, use one
pound to each bushel of malt.

The process of brewing is the same as described for brewing ale
with table beer after, except the heat of each mash must not be so
high by 10 degrees, on account of the brown malt; the first wort
fermented by itself will be stout porter, and fit to tap in 3 or 4
weeks; the second wort will be the table beer, and fit to tap in a
week, or as soon as fine; but if you mix the first and second worts
together, the same as for table ale, it will be good common porter.

_To Brew Table Beer only._--Let your malt be of one sort, of a full
yellow colour (not brown malt) ground coarse, and strong brown
coloured hops, of a glutinous quality. If for present draught 1/2 a
pound of hops to each bushel of malt will be sufficient, but if for
keeping two or 3 months, use one pound of hops per bushel.

The process of brewing is the same as described for brewing porter
and table beer, with the addition of another wort, that is, filling
the machine a third time with water before you take out the grains,
and treating the third mash the same as the second.

The first drawing off or wort, with part of the second wort, to be
boiled (first) one hour with all the hops, and the remainder of the
second wort with the third, to be boiled next one hour to the same
hops; these two boilings, when cooled down to 60 degrees of heat,
(having put your yeast to it in the coolers at 70 degrees) must be
put together to ferment in the machine boiler, and as soon as it has
the appearance of a brown yeast on the surface, draw it off into the
casks, which must be kept filled full, and when done working, put
into each cask a handful of dry hops, bung it down tight, and put it
into a cool cellar. Tap it in a week, or as soon as fine.

_General Remarks._--The season for brewing sound keeping beer, is
from October to May.

_All Beer should be stored in cool cellars or vaults, and kept
as much as possible from the common atmosphere_; and in drawing
beer from a cask, if necessary to raise the vent-peg, it should be
carefully tightened as soon as the beer is drawn.

When beer is intended to be kept many months, the bungs of the
casks, and if bell casks are used, the whole of the head should be
covered with sand or clay, which should be kept moist.

_To preserve the Machine._--When the brewing is over, wash the
machine and coolers with cold or hot water, then dry them, and put
them away in a dry place. When wanted to be used, they should be
washed with boiling water.

_To keep Casks sweet._--It is recommended when a cask of beer
is drawn off, to take out the head and scrub out the cask; then
thoroughly dry and put it away in a dry place with the head out.

If it should be inconvenient to take out the head, and the cask is
wanted to be filled again quickly, it may be washed quite clean
with warm water, and afterwards with lime water; or the grounds
being left in the cask, and every vent stopped, (bung, tap, and vent
holes,) it may be kept in that state for a short time.

Casks of a bell shape are preferable for private brewing, and the
patentees make them upon a principle by which the inside can be
scrubbed out clean without removing the head, and at the same price
as common casks of that shape.

       *       *       *       *       *


The following comparative statement of the cost of Brewing Beer with
Needham's apparatus, and of Beer when purchased, is given by the
proprietor.--The references are to London prices, but an opinion may
still be formed of the great economy of Domestic Brewing.

  Daily Consumption of| Yearly Consumption| Brewers' Prices.    | Yearly expense
   ale in a family, 3 |   is 137 gallons  | At 2s. 6d. per gal. |  L.17   2  6
   pints Do. of table | Is 137 gallons    | At 8d.              |     4  11  4
   beer, 3 pints      |                     |                   | -------------
                                                                      21  13 10

  To Brew the above quantity of good Ale and Table Beer, 15-1/4
    Bushels of Malt are required, the cost of which, at 10s. per
    Bushel, will be                                    L.7  12  6
  11-1/2 _lbs._ best Hops, for ditto, at 5s.             2  17  6----10  10  0
                 Yearly saving in the above quantity                 11  3  10

The above calculation sufficiently proves that the Patent Brewing
Machine will, to the smallest Family who purchase Brewer's Beer, pay
for itself in One Year, and those who have been accustomed to Brew
by the old Method, will find the beer much stronger and better by
using this Machine, and very considerably less likely to be spoiled
in Brewing, with a great saving in Fuel, Labour, and Time.

As it may be inconvenient, or too expensive, for many private
families to purchase a brewing machine, the following Directions are
subjoined, which will enable them, by the aid of the vessels used
in a family, to brew a barrel of beer; and by attention, and a few
experiments, they will produce an excellent beverage.

Prepare a tub for making the extract, by fitting a false bottom with
numerous holes, and raised about half an inch from the real bottom,
in which fix a cock for drawing off the extract. Have four bushels
of malt coarsely ground, and heat your water to about 170 or 175
degrees[10] of heat, of Fahrenheit's thermometer. Then pour in the
tub about thirty-eight gallons of the water, and gently stir in the
malt, until it is all mixed. Cover it, and let it stand about an
hour and a half; draw off the extract into a vessel, and throw in
about one and a quarter pounds of hops for liquor for present use,
or about two or two and a half pounds for keeping liquors; cover the
vessel to keep in the heat, and pour over the malt about 26 gallons
of water, of about the same heat as the first, stirring it until it
is well mixed with the malt; let it stand one hour, then draw off
the extract, add it to the first extract, and put them on to boil in
an open kettle: this will be your strong beer. Then pour over the
malt about twenty gallons of water, for small beer, at about 160 or
170 degrees of heat. This last will not require stirring, and the
extract may remain covered until the kettle is ready for it. Keep
the strong beer boiling smartly for about one hour and a quarter, or
one hour and a half, for present use, or two hours for keeping: then
pour it through a sieve or strainer, and set it to cool. Return the
hops into the kettle with your third extract, or small beer, which
set to boiling as soon as practicable, and continue it for about an
hour and a half; then pour it through the strainer, and set it to
cool. When cool, ferment according to the directions accompanying
the brewing machine. The quantity of water used may be varied at
the discretion of the person brewing. By diminishing the water,
he may increase the strength of the liquor, or by increasing it,
diminish the strength. Thus with the hops he may vary the quantity
to suit his palate in the degree of bitter flavour that may be most
agreeable.--For fomenting, a cask with one head taken out, will
answer the same purpose as the machine boiler.

  [10] NOTE.--A person who experienced its benefit and almost
  certainty, informs us, that he always practised looking steadily
  into the vapours of the brewing kettle, after the liquor (water)
  had been in a boiling state for some time. The moment he could
  distinguish the features of his face, in the surface of the water,
  he directed the cock to be turned; and the liquor, of course, thrown
  over the mash. This was an unerring substitute for a thermometer, or
  sachorometer. His kettle, which had been a still, held about sixty
  gallons.



THE SNOW STORM.

From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, for April.

     "'Tis only from the belief of the goodness and wisdom of a
     Supreme Being, that our calamities can be borne in that manner
     which becomes a man."--HENRY MACKENZIE.


In summer there is a beauty in the wildest moors of Scotland, and
the wayfaring man who sits down for an hour's rest beside some
little spring that flows unheard through the brightened moss and
water-cresses, feels his weary heart revived by the silent, serene,
and solitary prospect. On every side sweet sunny spots of verdure
smile towards him from among the melancholy heather--unexpectedly
in the solitude a stray sheep, it may be with its lambs, starts
half alarmed at his motionless figure--insects large, bright, and
beautiful come careering by him through the desert air--nor does the
Wild want its own songsters, the grey linnet, fond of the blooming
furze, and now and then the lark mounting up to heaven above the
summits of the green pastoral hills.--During such a sunshiny hour,
the lonely cottage on the waste seems to stand a paradise; and as he
rises to pursue his journey, the traveller looks back and blesses
it with a mingled emotion of delight and envy. There, thinks he,
abide the children of innocence and contentment, the two most benign
spirits that watch over human life.

But other thoughts arise in the mind of him who may chance to
journey through the same scene in the desolation of Winter. The cold
bleak sky girdles the moor as with a belt of ice--life is frozen in
air and on earth. The silent is not of repose but extinction--and
should a solitary human dwelling catch his eye half buried in the
snow, he is sad for the sake of them whose destiny it is to abide
far from the cheerful haunts of men, shrouded up in melancholy, by
poverty held in thrall, or pining away in unvisited or untended
sickness.

But, in truth, the heart of human life is but imperfectly discovered
from its countenance; and before we can know what the summer, or
what the winter yields for enjoyment or trial to our country's
peasantry, we must have conversed with them in their fields and by
their fire-sides; and make ourselves acquainted with the powerful
ministry of the seasons, not over those objects alone that feed the
eye and the imagination, but over all the incidents, occupations,
and events that modify or constitute the existence of the poor.

I have a short and simple story to tell of the winter life of the
moorland cottager--a story but of one evening--with a few events and
no signal catastrophe--but which may haply please those hearts whose
delight it is to think on the humble under-plots that are carrying
on in the great Drama of life.

Two cottagers, husband and wife, were sitting by their cheerful
peat-fire one winter evening, in a small lonely hut, on the edge
of a wide moor, at some miles distance from any other habitation.
There had been, at one time, several huts of the same kind erected
close together, and inhabited by families of the poorest class of
day-labourers who found work among the distant farms, and at night
returned to dwellings which were rent free, with their little
gardens, won from the waste.--But one family after another had
dwindled away, and the turf-built huts had all fallen into ruins,
except one that had always stood in the centre of this little
solitary village, with its summer walls covered with the richest
honeysuckles and in the midst of the brightest of all the gardens.
It alone now sent up its smoke into the clear winter sky--and its
little end window, now lighted up, was the only ground star that
shone towards the belated traveller, if any such ventured to cross,
on a winter night, a scene so dreary and desolate. The affairs of
the small household were all arranged for the night. The little
rough pony that had drawn in a sledge, from the heart of the
Black-Moss, the fuel by whose blaze the cottiers were now sitting
cheerily and the little Highland cow, whose milk enabled them to
live, were standing amicably together, under cover of a rude shed,
of which one side was formed by the peat stack, and which was at
once byre, and stable, and hen-roost. Within, the clock ticked
cheerfully as the fire-light readied its old oak-wood case across
the yellow sanded floor--and a small round table stood between,
covered with a snow-white cloth, on which were milk and oat cakes,
the morning, mid-day, and evening meal of these frugal and contented
cottiers. The spades and the mattocks of the labourer were collected
into one corner, and showed that the succeeding day was the blessed
Sabbath--while on the wooden chimney-piece were seen lying an open
Bible ready for family worship.

The father and mother were sitting together without opening their
lips, but with their hearts overflowing with happiness, for on this
Saturday-night they were, every minute, expecting to hear at the
latch the hand of their only daughter, a maiden of about fifteen
years, who was at service with a farmer over the hills. This dutiful
child was, as they knew, to bring home to them "her sair-worn penny
fee," a pittance which, in the beauty of her girl-hood, she earned
singing at her work, and which, in the benignity of that sinless
time, she would pour with tears into the bosoms she so dearly loved.
Forty shillings a year were all the wages of sweet Hannah Lee--but
though she wore at her labour a tortoise-shell comb in her auburn
hair, and though in the kirk none were more becomingly arrayed
than she, one half, at least, of her earnings were to be reserved
for the holiest of all purposes, and her kind innocent heart was
gladdened when she looked on the little purse that was, on the long
expected Saturday-night, to be taken from her bosom, and put, with a
blessing, into the hand of her father, now growing old at his daily
toils.

Of such a child the happy cottiers were thinking in their silence.
And well might they be called happy. It is at that sweet season that
filial piety is most beautiful.--Their own Hannah, had just outgrown
the mere unthinking gladness of childhood, but had not yet reached
that time, when inevitable selfishness mixes with the pure current
of love. She had begun to think on what her affectionate heart had
felt so long; and when she looked on the pale face and bending
frame of her mother, on the deepening wrinkles, and whitening hairs
of her father, often would she lie weeping for their sakes on her
midnight bed--and wish that she was beside them as they slept,
that she might kneel down and kiss them, and mention their names
over and over again in her prayer. The parents whom before she had
only loved, her expanding heart now also venerated. With gushing
tenderness was now mingled a holy fear and an awful reverence. She
had discerned the relation in which she, an only child, stood to
her poor parents now that they were getting old, and there was not
a passage in Scripture that spake of parents or of children, from
Joseph sold into slavery, to Mary weeping below the Cross, that was
not written, never to be obliterated, on her uncorrupted heart.

The father rose from his seat, and went to the door to look out
into the night.--The stars were in thousands--and the full moon
was risen.--It was almost light as day, and the snow, that seemed
incrusted with diamonds, was so hardened by the frost, that his
daughter's homeward feet would leave no mark on its surface. He had
been toiling all day among the distant Castle-woods, and, stiff
and wearied as he now was, he was almost tempted to go to meet his
child, but his wife's kind voice dissuaded him, and returning to the
fire-side, they began to talk of her whose image had been so long
passing before them in their silence.

"She is growing up to be a bony lassie," said the mother, "her long
and weary attendance on me during my fever last spring kept her down
awhile--but now she is sprouting fast and fair as a lily, and may
the blessing of God be as dew and as sunshine to our sweet flower
all the days she bloometh upon this earth." "Aye Agnes," replied the
father, "we are not very old yet--though we are getting older--and a
few years will bring her to women's estate, and what thing on this
earth, think ye, human or brute, would ever think of injuring her?
Why I was speaking about her yesterday to the minister as he was
riding by, and he told me that none answered at the Examination
in the Kirk so well as Hannah.--Poor thing--I well think she has
all the Bible by heart--indeed, she has read but little else--only
some stories, too true ones, of the blessed martyrs, and some o'
the auld sangs o' Scotland, in which there is nothing but what is
good, and which, to be sure, she sings, God bless her, sweeter than
any laverock." "Aye--were we both to die this very night, she would
be happy--not that she would forget us, all the days of her life.
But have you not seen, husband, that God always makes the orphan
happy?--None so little lonesome as they! They come to make friends
o' all the bonny and sweet things in the world around them, and
all the kind hearts in the world make friends o' them. They come
to know that God is more especially the father o' them on earth
whose parents he has taken up to heaven--and therefore it is that
they for whom so many have fears, fear not at all for themselves,
but go dancing and singing along like children whose parents are
both alive! Would it not be so with our dear Hannah? So douce and
thoughtful a child--but never sad nor miserable--ready it is true
to shed tears for little, but as ready to dry them up and break
out into smiles! I know not why it is, husband, but this night my
heart warms toward her, beyond usual. The moon and stars are at this
moment looking down upon her, and she looking up to them, as she
is glinting homewards over the snow. I wish she were but here, and
taking the comb out o' her bonny hair, and letting it all fall down
in clusters before the fire, to melt away the cranreuch!"

While the parents were thus speaking of their daughter a loud sugh
of wind came suddenly over the cottage, and the leafless ash-tree
under whose shelter it stood, creaked and groaned dismally, as it
passed by.--The father started up, and going again to the door,
saw that a sudden change had come over the face of the night. The
moon had nearly disappeared, and was just visible in a dim yellow,
glimmering in the sky.--All the remote stars were obscured, and only
one or two faintly seemed in a sky that half an hour before was
perfectly cloudless, but that was now driven with rack, and mist,
and sleet, the whole atmosphere being in commotion. He stood for
a single moment to observe the direction of this unforseen storm,
and then hastily asked for his staff. "I thought I had been more
weather-wise--A storm is coming down from the Cairnbrae-hawse, and
we shall have nothing but a wild night." He then whistled on his
dog--an old sheep dog, too old for its former labours and set off to
meet his daughter, who might then, for aught he knew, be crossing
the Black-moss.

The mother accompanied her husband to the door, and took a long
frightened look at the angry sky. As she kept gazing, it became
still more terrible. The last shred of blue was extinguished--the
wind went whirling in roaring eddies, and great flakes of snow
circled about in the middle air, whether drifted up from the ground,
or driven down from the clouds, the fear-striken mother knew not,
but she at least knew, that it seemed a night of danger, despair,
and death. "Lord have mercy on us James, what will become of our
poor bairn!" But her husband heard not her words, for he was already
out of sight in the snow storm, and she was left to the terror of
her own soul in that lonesome cottage.

Little Hannah Lee had left her master's house, soon as the rim of
the great moon was seen by her eyes, that had been long anxiously
watching it from the window, rising like a joyful dream, over the
gloomy mountain-tops; and all by herself she tripped along beneath
the beauty of the silent heaven. Still as she kept ascending and
descending the knolls that lay in the bosom of the glen, she sung
to herself a song, a hymn, or a psalm, without the accompaniment
of the streams, now all silent in the frost; and ever and anon she
stopped to try to count the stars that lay in some more beautiful
part of the sky, or gazed, on the constellations that she knew,
and called them, in her joy, by the names they bore among the
shepherds.--There were none to hear her voice, or see her smiles,
but the ear and eye of Providence. As on she glided and took her
looks from heaven, she saw her own little fire-side--her parents
waiting for her arrival--the bible opened for worship--her own
little room kept so neatly for her, with its mirror hanging by the
window, in which to braid her hair by the morning light--her bed
prepared for her by her mother's hand--the primroses in her garden
peeping through the snow--old Tray, who ever welcomed her home with
his dim white eyes--the poney and the cow; friends all, and inmates
of that happy household. So stepped she along, while the snow
diamonds glittering around her feet, and the frost wove a wreath of
lucid pearls around her forehead.

She had now reached the edge of the Black-moss, which lay half way
between her master's and her father's dwelling, when she heard a
loud noise coming down from Glen-Scrae, and in a few seconds, she
felt on her face some flakes of snow. She looked up the glen, and
saw the snow storm coming down, fast as a flood. She felt no fears;
but she ceased her song; and had there been a human eye to look upon
her there, it might have seen a shadow on her face. She continued
her course, and felt bolder and bolder every step that brought her
nearer to her parent's house. But the snow storm had now reached
the Black-moss, and the broad line of light that had lain in the
direction of her home, was soon swallowed up, and the child was in
utter darkness. She saw nothing but the flakes of snow, interminably
intermingled, and furiously wafted in the air, close to her head;
she heard nothing but one wild, fierce, fitful howl. The cold became
intense, and her little feet and hands were fast, being benumbed
into insensibility.

"It is a fearful change," muttered the child to herself, but still
she did not fear, for she had been born in a moorland cottage, and
lived all her days among the hardships of the hills.--"What will
become of the poor sheep," thought she,--but still she scarcely
thought of her own danger, for innocence and youth, and joy, are
slow to think of ought evil befalling themselves, and thinking
benignly of all living things, forget their own fear in their pity
of others' sorrow.--At last, she could no longer discern a single
mark on the snow, either of human steps, or of sheep track, or the
foot print of a wild-fowl. Suddenly, too, she felt out of breath and
exhausted,--and shedding tears for herself at last sank down in the
snow.

It was now that her heart began to quake for fear. She remembered
stories of the shepherds lost in the snow,--of a mother and child
frozen to death on that very moor,--and, in a moment she knew that
she was to die. Bitterly did the poor child weep, for death was
terrible to her, who, though poor, enjoyed the bright little world
of youth and innocence. The skies of heaven were dearer than she
knew to her,--so were the flowers of earth. She had been happy
at her work--happy in her sleep--happy in the kirk on Sabbath. A
thousand thoughts had the solitary child,--and in her own heart
was a spring of happiness, pure and undisturbed as any fount that
sparkles unseen all the year through, in some quiet nook among the
pastoral hills. But now there was to be an end of all this,--she was
to be frozen to death--and lie there till the thaw might come; and
then her father would find her body, and carry it away to be buried
in the kirk-yard.

The tears were frozen on her cheeks as soon as shed--and scarcely
had her little hands strength to clasp themselves together, as she
thought of an overruling and merciful Lord came across her heart.
Then, indeed, the fears of this religious child were calmed, and she
heard without terror, the plover's wailing cry, and the deep boom of
the bittern sounding in the moss. "I will repeat the Lord's prayer."
And drawing her plaid more closely around her, she whispered beneath
its ineffectual cover; "Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed
be thy name,--thy kingdom come--thy will be done on earth as it is
in heaven." Had human aid been within fifty yards, it could have
been of no avail--eye could not see her--ear could not hear her in
that howling darkness. But that low prayer was heard in the centre
of eternity--and that little sinless child was lying in the snow,
beneath the all-seeing eye of God.

The maiden having prayed to her Father in Heaven--then thought of
her Father on earth. Alas! they were not far separated! The father
was lying but a short distance from his child; he too had sunk down
in the drifting snow, after having in less than an hour, exhausted
all the strength of fear, pity, hope, despair, and resignation, that
could rise in a father's heart, blindly seeking to rescue his only
child from death, thinking that one desperate exertion might enable
them to die in each other's arms. There they lay, within a stone's
throw of each other, while a huge snow drift was every moment piling
itself up into a more insurmountable barrier between the dying
parent and his dying child.

There was all this while a blazing fire in the cottage--a white
spread table--and beds prepared for the family to lie down in peace.
Yet was she who sat thereon more to be pitied than the old man and
the child stretched upon the snow. "I will not go to seek them--that
would be tempting Providence--and wilfully putting out the lamp
of life. No! I will abide here, and pray for their souls?" Then
as she knelt down, looked she at the useless fire burning away so
cheerfully, when all she loved might be dying of cold--and unable
to bear the thought, she shrieked out a prayer, as if she might
pierce the sky up to the very throne of God, and send with it her
own miserable soul, to plead before Him for the deliverance of her
child and husband.--She then fell down in blessed forgetfulness
of all trouble, in the midst of the solitary cheerfulness of that
bright-burning hearth--and the bible, which she had been trying to
read in the pause of her agony, remained clasped in her hands.

Hannah Lee had been a servant for more than six months--and it was
not to be thought that she was not beloved in her master's family.
Soon after she had left the house, her master's son, a youth of
about eighteen years, who had been among the hills, looking after
the sheep, came home, and was disappointed to find that he had
lost an opportunity of accompanying Hannah part of the way to her
father's cottage. But the hour of eight had gone by, and not even
the company of young William Grieve, could induce the kind-hearted
daughter to delay sitting out on her journey, a few minutes beyond
the time promised to her parents. "I do not like the night," said
William--"there will be a fresh fall of snow soon, or the witch
of Glen Scrae is a liar, for a snow-cloud is hanging o'er the
birch-tree-linn, and it may be down to the Black-moss as soon as
Hannah Lee." So he called his two sheep dogs, that had taken their
place under the long table before the window, and set out, half in
joy, half in fear, to overtake Hannah and see her safely across the
Black-moss.

The snow began to drift so fast, that before he had reached the
head of the Glen, there was nothing to be seen but a little bit
of the wooden rail of the bridge across the Sauch burn. William
Grieve was the most active shepherd in a large pastoral parish--he
had often passed the night among the wintery hills for the sake
of a few sheep, and all the snow that had ever fell from Heaven,
would not have made him turn back when Hannah Lee was before him;
and as his terrified heart told him, in imminent danger of being
lost.--As he advanced, he felt that it was no longer a walk of love
or friendship, for which he had been glad of an excuse. Death stared
him in the face, and his young soul, now beginning to feel all the
passions of youth, was filled with phrenzy. He had seen Hannah
every day--at the fire-side--at work--in the kirk--on holydays--at
prayers--bringing supper to his aged parents--smiling and singing
about the house from morning till night. She had often brought his
own meal to him among the hills--and he now found, that though he
had never talked to her about love, except smilingly, and playfully,
that he loved her beyond father or mother, or his own soul. "I
will save thee, Hannah," he cried with a loud sob, "or lie down
beside thee in the snow--and we will die together in our youth."
A wild whistling wind went by him, and the snow-flakes whirled so
fiercely round his head, that he staggered on for a while in utter
blindness. He knew the path that Hannah must have taken, and went
forward shouting aloud, and stopping every twenty yards to listen
for a voice. He sent his well trained dogs over the snow in all
directions--repeating to them her name "Hannah Lee," that the dumb
animals might, in their sagacity, know for whom they were searching;
and as they looked up in his face, and set off to scour the moor,
he almost believed that they knew his meaning, (and it is probable
they did) and were eager to find in her bewilderment the kind maiden
by whose hand they had so often been fed. Often went they off into
the darkness, and as often returned, but their looks showed that
every quest had been in vain. Meanwhile the snow was of a fearful
depth, and falling without intermission or diminution. Had the young
shepherd been thus alone, walking across the moor on his ordinary
business, it is probable that he might have been alarmed for his own
safety--nay, that in spite of all his strength and agility, he might
have sunk down beneath the inclemency of the night and perished.
But now, the passion of his soul carried him with supernatural
strength along, and extricated him from wreath and pitfall. Still
there was no trace of poor Hannah Lee--and one of his dogs at last
came close to his feet, worn out entirely, and afraid to leave its
master--while the other was mute, and, as the shepherd thought,
probably unable to force its way out of some hollow or through some
floundering drift.--Then he all at once knew that Hannah Lee was
dead--and dashed himself down in the snow in a fit of passion.

It was the first time that the youth had ever been sorely tried--all
his hidden and unconscious love for the fair lost girl had flowed up
from the bottom of his heart--and at once the sole object which had
blessed his life and made him the happiest of the happy, was taken
away and cruelly destroyed--so that sullen, wrathful, baffled and
despairing, there he lay, cursing his existence, and in too great
agony to think of prayer. "God," he then thought, "has forsaken
me--and why should he think on me, when he suffers one so good and
beautiful as Hannah to be frozen to death." God thought both of
him and Hannah--and through his infinite mercy forgave the sinner
in his wild turbulence of passion. William Grieve had never gone
to bed without joining in prayer--and he revered the Sabbath-day
and kept it holy. Much is forgiven to the human heart by him who
so fearfully framed it; and God is not slow to pardon the love
which one human being bears to another, in his frailty--even though
that love forget or arraign his own unsleeping providence. His
voice has told us to love one another--and William loved Hannah
in simplicity, innocence, and truth. That she should perish, was
a thought so dreadful, that, in its agony God seemed a ruthless
being--"blow--blow--blow--and drift us up for ever--we cannot be far
asunder--O Hannah--Hannah--think ye not that the fearful God has
forsaken us?"

As the boy groaned these words passionately through his quivering
lips, there was a sudden lowness in the air, and he heard the
barking of his absent dog, while the one at his feet hurried off in
the direction of the sound, and soon loudly joined the cry. It was
not a bark of surprise--or anger--or fear--but of recognition and
love. William sprung up from his bed in the snow and with his heart
knocking at his bosom even to sickness, he rushed headlong through
the drifts, with a giant's strength, and fell down half dead with
joy and terror beside the body of Hannah Lee.

But he soon recovered from that fit, and lifting the cold corpse
in his arms, he kissed her lips, and her cheeks, and her forehead,
and her closed eyes, till, as he kept gazing on her face in utter
despair, her head fell back on his shoulder, and a long deep sigh
came from her inmost bosom.--"She is yet alive thank God!"--and as
that expression left his lips for the first time that night, he felt
a pang of remorse:" "I said, O God, that thou hadst forsaken us--I
am not worthy to be saved; but let not this maiden perish, for the
sake of her parents, who have no other child."

The distracted youth prayed to God with the same earnestness as if
he had been beseeching a fellow creature, in whose hand was the
power of life and of death. The presence of the Great Being was
felt by him in the dark and howling wild, and strength was imparted
to him as to a deliverer. He bore along the fair child in his
arms, even as if she had been a lamb. The snow drift blew not--the
wind fell dead--a sort of glimmer, like that of an upbreaking and
departing storm, gathered about him--his dogs barked and jumped,
and burrowed joyfully in the snow--and the youth, strong in sudden
hope, exclaimed, "With the blessing of God, who has not deserted us
in our sore distress, will I carry thee, Hannah, in my arms, and lay
thee down alive in the house of thy father."--At this moment there
were no stars in Heaven, but she opened her dim blue eyes upon him
on whose bosom she was unconsciously lying, and said, as in a dream,
"Send the riband that ties up my hair, as a keepsake to William
Grieve." "She thinks that she is on her death bed, and forgets not
the son of her master. It is the voice of God that tells me she will
not now die, and that, under His grace, I shall be her deliverer."

The short lived rage of the storm was soon over, and William could
attend to the beloved being on his bosom. The warmth of his heart
seemed to infuse life into her's; and as he gently placed her feet
on the snow, till he muffled her up in his plaid, as well as in her
own, she made an effort to stand, and with extreme perplexity and
bewilderment, faintly inquired, where she was, and what fearful
catastrophe had befallen them? She was, however, too weak to walk;
and as her young master carried her along, she murmured, "O William!
what if my father be in the moor?--For if you, who need care so
little about me, have come hither, as I suppose to save my life, you
may be sure that my father sat not within doors during the storm."
As she spoke it was calm below, but the wind was still alive in
the upper air, and cloud, rack, mist, and sleet, were all driving
about in the sky. Out shone for a moment the pallid and ghostly
moon, through a rent in the gloom, and by that uncertain light, came
staggering forward the figure of a man.--"Father--Father," cried
Hannah--and his gray hairs were already on her cheek. The barking
of the dogs and the shouting of the young shepherd had struck his
ear, as the sleep of death was stealing over him, and with the last
effort of benumbed nature, he had roused himself from that fatal
torpor and prest through the snow wreath that had separated him from
his child. As yet they knew not of the danger each had endured--but
each judged of the other's suffering from their own, and father and
daughter regarded one another as creatures rescued, and hardly yet
rescued from death.

But a few minutes ago, and the three human beings who loved each
other so well, and now feared not to cross the Moor in safety, were,
as they thought, on their death beds. Deliverance now shone upon
them all like a gentle fire, dispelling that pleasant but deadly
drowsiness; and the old man was soon able to assist William Grieve
in leading Hannah along through the snow. Her colour and her warmth
returned, and her lover--for so might he well now be called--felt
her heart gently beating against her side. Filled as that heart was
with gratitude to God, joy in her deliverance, love to her father,
and purest affection for her master's son, never before had the
innocent maiden known what was happiness--and never more was she
to forget it. The night was now almost calm, and fast returning
to its former beauty--when the party saw the first twinkle of the
fire through the low window of the Cottage of the Moor. They soon
were at the garden gate--and to relieve the heart of the wife and
mother within, they talked loudly and cheerfully--naming each other
familiarly, and laughing between, like persons who had known neither
danger nor distress.

No voice answered from within--no footsteps came to the door which
stood open, as when the father had left it in his fear, and now he
thought with affright, that his wife, feeble as she was, had been
unable to support the loneliness, and had followed him out into the
night, never to be brought home alive.--As they bore Hannah into
the house, his fear gave way to worse, for there upon the hard clay
floor lay the mother upon her face, as if murdered by some savage
blow. She was in the same deadly swoon into which she had fallen on
her husband's departure, three hours before. The old man raised her
up, and her pulse was still--so was her heart--her face pale and
sunken--and her body cold as ice. "I have recovered a daughter,"
said the old man, "but I have lost a wife;" and he carried her,
with a groan, to the bed on which he laid her lifeless body. The
sight was too much for Hannah, worn out as she was, and who had
hitherto been able to support herself in the delightful expectation
of gladdening her mother's heart by her safe arrival. She, too, now
swooned away, and, as she was placed on the bed beside her mother,
it seemed, indeed that death, disappointed of his prey on the wild
moor, had seized it in the cottage, and by the fire-side. The
husband knelt down by the bed-side, and held his wife's icy hand in
his, while William Grieve appalled, and awe-stricken, hung over his
Hannah, and inwardly implored God that the night's wild adventure
might not have so ghastly an end. But Hannah's young heart soon
began once more to beat--and soon as she came to her recollection,
she rose up with a face whiter than ashes, and free from all
smiles, as if none had ever played there, and joined her father and
young master in their efforts to restore her mother to life.

It was the mercy of God that had struck her down to the earth,
insensible to the shrieking winds, and the fears that would
otherwise have killed her. Three hours of that wild storm had passed
over her head, and she heard nothing more than if she had been
asleep in a breathless night of the summer dew. Not even a dream
had touched her brain, and when she opened her eyes which, as she
thought had been but a moment shut, she had scarcely time to recal
to her recollection the image of her husband rushing out into the
storm, and of a daughter therein lost, till she beheld that very
husband kneeling tenderly by her bed-side, and that very daughter
smoothing the pillow on which her aching temples reclined. But she
knew from the white steadfast countenances before her that there
had been tribulation and deliverance, and she looked on the beloved
beings ministering by her bed, as more fearfully dear to her from
the unimagined danger from which she felt assured they had been
rescued by the arm of the Almighty.

There is little need to speak of returning recollection, and
returning strength. They had all now power to weep, and power to
pray. The Bible had been lying in its place ready for worship--and
the father read aloud that chapter in which is narrated our
Saviour's act of miraculous power, by which he saved Peter from
the sea. Soon as the solemn thoughts awakened by that act of mercy
so similar to that which had rescued themselves from death had
subsided, and they had all risen up from prayer, they gathered
themselves in gratitude round the little table which had stood
so many hours spread--and exhausted nature was strengthened
and restored by a frugal and simple meal partaken of in silent
thankfulness.

The whole story of the night was then calmly recited--and when the
mother heard how the stripling had followed her sweet Hannah into
the storm, and borne her in his arms through a hundred drifted
heaps--and then looked upon her in her pride, so young, so innocent,
and so beautiful, she knew, that were the child indeed to become an
orphan, there was one, who, if there was either trust in nature, or
truth in religion, would guard and cherish her all the days of her
life.

It was not nine o'clock when the storm came down from Glen Scrae
upon the Black-moss, and now in a pause of silence the clock struck
twelve. Within these three hours William and Hannah had led a life
of trouble and of joy, that had enlarged and kindled their hearts
within them--and they felt that henceforth they were to live wholly
for each other's sakes. His love was the proud and exulting love of
a deliverer, who, under Providence, had saved from the frost and
the snow the innocence and the beauty of which his young passionate
heart had been so desperately enamoured--and he now thought of his
own Hannah Lee ever more moving about in his father's house, not as
a servant, but as a daughter--and when some few happy years had gone
by, his own most beautiful and most loving wife. The innocent maiden
still called him her young master--but was not ashamed of the holy
affection which she now knew that she had long felt for the fearless
youth on whose bosom she had thought herself dying in that cold
and miserable moor. Her heart leapt within her when she heard her
parents bless him by his name--and when he took her hand into his
before them, and vowed before that Power who had that night saved
them from the snow, that Hannah Lee should ere long be his wedded
wife--she wept and sobbed as if her heart would break in a fit of
strange and insupportable happiness.

The young shepherd rose to bid them farewell--"my father will think
I am lost," said he, with a grave smile, "and my Hannah's mother
knows what it is to fear for a child." So nothing was said to detain
him, and the family went with him to the door. The skies smiled
serenely as if a storm had never swept before the stars--the moon
was sinking from her meridian, but in cloudless splendour--and the
hollow of the hills was hushed as that of heaven. Danger there
was none over the placid night-scene--the happy youth soon crost
the Black-moss, now perfectly still--and, perhaps, just as he was
passing, with a shudder of gratitude, the very spot where his sweet
Hannah Lee had so nearly perished, she was lying down to sleep in
her innocence, or dreaming of one now dearer to her than all on
earth but her parents.

  EREMUS.



MY NEIGHBOUR EPHRAIM.


I went this afternoon to pay a visit to my neighbour Ephraim; indeed
I find his cheerful fire-side so much more pleasant than my own
little solitary dwelling, that I am afraid I go there rather too
often; however, as yet I have not remarked any coldness or distance
in their reception of me. Ephraim had been a little indisposed, and
I found him reclining on the sofa; his wife was preparing something
comfortable for him by the fire, and his daughter, having arranged
his pillow to his mind, sat with her work at his feet, while
Ezekiel read to him--his other son was engaged in superintending
the business of the farm; but when the hour of tea approached,
he joined the circle in the parlour with a smiling countenance,
cheeks glowing with health, and an appetite which appeared in no
wise diminished by the exercise of the day. When I returned to my
own lonely habitation, I could not avoid contrasting a little my
situation with that of my old friend. Happy Ephraim! said I, thou
hast an excellent wife and dutiful daughter, to smooth the pillow
of thy aching head, to hover with feathery footsteps around thy
peaceful couch, and watch over thy slumbers with the assiduity of
anxious love--thou hast two manly intelligent sons, to attend to thy
business, to protect thy interests, and support thy tottering steps;
whose only strife is that of kindness, whose only rivalship, which
shall be most attentive to thee, each of whom would gladly say with
the poet,

    Me, may the gentle office long engage
    To rock the cradle of reposing age.--

And when at last, in a good old age, thou shalt be gathered to
thy fathers, a train of mourning relatives shall deposit with
decent care thy cherished remains in the narrow house appointed
for all living; while I stand alone in the world, an insulated,
insignificant being, for whom no one feels an interest, and whose
pains and pleasures are of consequence to no one; whose approach is
greeted with no smile, and whose departure excites no regret, and
when the closing scene approaches, no kindred hand shall support
my throbbing temples, or prepare the potion for my feverish lip,
but mercenary eyes alone mark with ill disguised impatience the
uncertain flutter of the lingering pulse, mercenary attendants
only receive, with frigid indifference, the last farewell of the
departing spirit--

    "By strangers' hands my dying eyes be clos'd,
    "By strangers' hands my lifeless limbs compos'd."

Lost in a train of such like melancholy musings, and pondering on
the past, the present and the future, I had suffered my fire to
become nearly extinguished, and the feeble glimmer of my untrimmed
taper faintly illumined my little study, when I was roused from my
revery by the entrance of Ezekiel and his sister: The good girl
said she had remarked that I was more silent than usual, and as
the evening was fine, they had come over to see if I was unwell:
this little act of kindness, though in itself no way remarkable,
yet coming at such a moment, affected me not a little.--But I must
shake off this gloom and depression of spirit, I am not now to learn
that the world had much rather laugh _with_ or _at_ a man than mourn
with him; I did not sit down to lament the desolation of my own
situation, which cannot now be remedied; but to exhort the young
to get married, to encourage them by the example of Ephraim, and
to warn them of my own: "Do nothing in a hurry," is an excellent
maxim in the main, but in some cases it is possible to use too much
deliberation; in the important business of taking a wife, many a man
has debated and deliberated, until the season for acting has passed
away. An old fellow like myself has little to do in the world, but
to talk for the benefit of his neighbours; and I would willingly
devote my experience to the service of the rising generation. I
should feel no objection to narrate the disastrous consequences of
my own superabundant caution in the affair of matrimony, and to
enumerate the many eligible matches which have slipped through my
fingers; the opportunities to form advantageous connexions which
have been unimproved in consequence of my hesitation and indecision,
for I have now no plans to be defeated or prospects blasted by a
knowledge of my failings, and no vanity to be mortified by the
exposure of my disappointments, but I am apprehensive the detail
might prove rather tedious and uninteresting; I may, however,
mention a few circumstances attending my last attempts to obtain a
help mate, if attempt it may be called. I had become acquainted in
the family of a respectable farmer, who had a daughter of a suitable
age, and although I cannot say that

    "Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye,
    "In every motion, dignity and love,"

yet her correct and orderly deportment seemed to promise that she
would make an excellent wife; I was therefore pretty frequent in my
visits, and though on these occasions my discourse was principally,
if not entirely, addressed to the parents, yet I kept a sharp
eye upon the daughter, in order to endeavour to form a tolerable
estimate of her disposition and character; and as I had in those
days a handsome little estate at my own disposal, and was upon the
whole considered rather a promising young man, my company seemed
always very acceptable, to the father and mother at least.

In this manner, eight or ten months, perhaps, passed pleasantly
away, and I was beginning to think that I might before long venture
to address her with a little freedom and familiarity, preparatory
to a serious negotiation when all my plans were defeated, and my
visionary castle crumbled into dust, by the precipitation of others.

One evening I was sitting with them as usual, when after a little
time the father and mother, on some occasion, absented themselves
from the room, and left the daughter and myself together. As I had
not the most distant suspicion that there was any design in their
movements, and expected their return every moment, I took up the
almanack, (being fond of reading) and had just got cleverly through
it, when they returned. I thought I remarked something particularly
scrutinizing in the looks of the mother, but I believe she soon
discovered that I had done nothing but read the almanack. On my
next visit, I felt no small trepidation, having a strong suspicion
of what might occur; and, in fact, we were again soon left alone
together--and now the consciousness of what was expected, kept me as
silent as ignorance had done before. In my distress I looked about
for the almanack, but they had taken it away. In vain I endeavoured
to find something to say, my faculties seemed spell bound; and I
sat, I know not how long, in a pitiable state of confusion and
embarrassment, until my companion made some remark respecting the
weather--this was a great relief. I immediately proceeded to treat
of the weather in all its bearings, past, present and to come, and
strove to prolong the discussion until some one might come in,
but in vain--the subject at length became exhausted, and silence
again took place; which lasted so long, and became so glaringly
ridiculous, that in utter despair, I was upon the point of having
recourse to the weather again, when we were relieved by the entrance
of company.

Determined never again to cut so silly a figure, I resolved to
provide against my next visit a fund of agreeable conversation.
I accordingly brushed up my acquaintance with the philosophy of
Aristotle, and of the peripatetics generally; collected some
anecdotes of the wise men of Greece, and, not to lack matters of
more recent date, stored my memory with a few amusing particulars
respecting Mary Queen of Scots, and of the court of Elizabeth:
thus prepared, I ventured once more to make my appearance, but I
had no opportunity to say a word about Aristotle or the Queen of
Scots; it was rather late when I entered the room, and I found my
intended in earnest conversation with a young man who had drawn
his chair very near to her: their discourse seemed to be of an
interesting nature, but they spoke in so low a tone, that I was
unable to profit by their remarks; I observed at last, that they
frequently smiled when looking towards me, and as I love a cheerful
countenance, and smiling is certainly contagious, I smiled a good
deal too. This seemed wonderfully to promote their risibility, and
my laughter increasing in the same proportion, we had a deal of
merriment, although little or nothing was said: how long this might
have continued I know not, had not my intended father-in-law called
me aside, and hinted that as the night was dark, and there was some
appearance of rain, I had perhaps better return. I thanked him for
his truly paternal care, and accordingly took my departure in high
good humour, and the next week was informed that the young people
were married.

  [_Rural Visiter._



VIEW OF A GOSSIP.


_Mr. Editor_--I send you the following account of a short inspection
of a fellow creature, which, if it will convey any information to
your readers, you are at liberty to publish.

I had the curiosity, as a neighbouring gossip was one day at my
house, and while she happened to be napping on the sofa, to try if I
could obtain a view of her ear, the structure of which I had often
speculated about. With the aid of a good eye-glass I succeeded. It
was a curious piece of mechanism: the outside folding was of the
usual size, but by long habit of eager listening, had acquired a
kind of gaping shape, which seemed to bid an indiscriminate welcome
to every sound. Next to this was a kind of whispering gallery,
so extremely susceptible of noise, that one of my most careful
breathings was immediately reverberated to the tympanum, and though
not loud enough to awake the sleeper, it was evident that it made
her dream of scandal. I was curious to know the construction of the
tympanum, which vibrated so easily to an empty breath. I could see
it plainly: for the long habit of extreme anxiety to receive every
breath that stirred, had pushed it forward to the very orifice of
the ear, where it seemed waiting in an agony of impatience for
something new, and complaining grievously that all the tit-bits of
intelligence had to pass such a distance before they could come to
its hearing. Its make was curious: it was an extremely fine sieve
of the most elastic materials. It was evidently constructed so
that every thing of the least weight should rebound as soon as
it touched, and only those articles which were as light as air,
should enter. It was too fine to admit any thing larger than a
bit of scandal. The whole external ear was designed to catch and
communicate every thing audible, for it is a maxim with gossips as
well as others, that nothing is too poor for a nice hand to sift
some good from it. This sifting was the office of the tympanum:
it was in a perpetual quiver. Its nice threads were constantly
shaking to pieces what was too light to rebound, and too large to
enter whole, and then dropping them to the receiver below. There
were a great many curious articles sticking in this sieve, which
had got half through but could go no further. There were little
pieces of serious and affecting family secrets, tales of distress,
cullings from the little failings of good men, morsels of sermons,
drippings of church business, ends, middles and halves of people's
sayings, anecdotes of funerals, with numerous suspicions, half heard
hear-says, and suspicions of near-says.--All these had evidently
been operated upon. A kind of scandalic acid had been at work on
those parts which had got within. They were partly decomposed;
their seriousness had assumed a ridiculous aspect, their solidity
had become gaseous: what had been affecting, seemed now to be
laughable; what had appeared commendable, seemed now composed of
so many disgusting materials as to be odious. Here I learned the
reason which I never knew before, why it is that gossips hear so
many lectures upon the degrading, injurious, disreputable character
of their pursuits, and so entirely without effect. These lectures
never passed their ears: their matter was too heavy not to rebound,
or the truths too great to gain admission; or, if any detached parts
chanced to enter, they were so broken by sifting, and so decomposed
and changed by the very pungent acid within, as to retain nothing
of their original seriousness, and become fit companions for the
nice selections which passed before them.

The sight of the ear excited my curiosity to look for the mind
within: whatever may be the difficulty of determining the seat of
the mind in persons of ordinary construction, the matter is clear,
that the gossip's mind must be as near to the vehicle of sound as
possible. This is confirmed by observation; I found it just inside
the ear, where there was but a small space, to be sure, for its
operation; but its dimensions were of no enlarged description. It
had evidently been made for some useful employment: its nerves
were strong, its perceptions quick, its action skilful; but it was
miserably contracted. Part of it, and plainly the best part, was
ruined by long inaction. It contained a few good ideas, grown rusty
by long disuse, which evidently might have been made to appear
respectable, could they have been delivered from the stuff which
covered them. This mind was a complete factory in miniature: there
was its picking machine, its spinning machine, a contrivance for
weaving, for shearing, for trimming; with dyes of every variety
of shade. All these machines were so artfully combined, that you
could see nothing of the raw material after it once went to be
picked, till it came out in an article nicely dressed and dyed for
distribution. There was a very smooth communication from the mind
to the mouth, through which the different articles, as soon as
finished, were conveyed, to be _kindly_, and _complacently_, and
_charitably_, rattled out to every one that should come. A peculiar
excellence of this mechanism was, that there seemed to be no refuse:
every thing was worked, every thing was turned to some account:
the motion here was perpetual, and acid was strangely used instead
of oil to facilitate it. All around, there were receipts for the
best method of making a good story out of almost nothing; of how
to extract something laughable from the most serious subjects; of
how to dye white into a good black, and how to find materials for
manufacturing, where no one would think of looking. The day-book
was a curiosity. "April 1st, eked out of John B's apprentice two
skeins of scandal about his master." "Monday, learned a good deal
from Mrs. C's cook about her mistress' private ways, and gained
a variety of nice bits, which, with a chain of good _home-spun_,
will make up a very good article." "Tuesday, heard a whisper about
something disagreeable in Mr. D's family, can't rest till I know
more about it; must send Sally into their kitchen to see what can
be picked up there. A few family quarrels would help finely just
now." "Wednesday, caught the thread to the tale which I have been
trying these three months to unwind, it seems to lead to some noble
pickings." "To-day, must go out and hear the news, and ask about
this marriage rumour."

As I was finishing my observations, a little neglected thing struck
my attention, which seemed to demand some notice. It was the
gossip's conscience. It was a little, contracted, fantastical body,
that seemed extremely averse to noise and all kinds of disturbance;
to avoid which, it had squeezed itself into a narrow corner, where,
with the help of several ingenious contrivances, it kept clear of
all interference: it seemed to sleep almost all the time, in which
it was assisted by the influence of numerous little nostrums which
were kept for the purpose. When conscience did sometimes awake,
(as I conjectured) it was mostly on a Sunday, while there was but
little doing, _comparatively_, when it looked about a little, made
some bustle, and went to sleep again perfectly satisfied. From
appearance, I judged that conscience and the gossip had very little
intercourse.

One thing was remarkable about this mental factory, which was, the
flourishing state of its business; a circumstance which seems the
more strange, because such establishments are so very numerous, and
their productions so eminently worthless.

Now, sir, having finished my description, permit me to ask, if
there is any thing to excuse the employment of gossips, great or
small? Can the want of other occupation, or the amusement which this
affords them, make amends for such degradation of themselves; such
abominable trifling with their neighbour's character; such vexatious
meddling with other's business; such remorseless transformation of
good into evil; of secrets into public news; of the serious into the
ridiculous; of peace into disputing; as they are constantly guilty
of? Ought not such persons to be universally shunned as public
evils, and if a public law will do no good, should it not be the
secret resolution of every gossip-hater, to avoid as a pestilence,
the scandalous atmosphere of a scandalous tale-bearer?

There is a celebrated description of law which affords a good
outline for the description of what of all things is most lawless.
Of scandal, there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat
is in the temple of fame; her voice the confusion of the world;
all things in earth and hell own her influence; the very least as
feeling her hate, and the greatest as not exempt from her power;
both men and women, and creatures of what condition soever, though
each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent,
detesting her as the pest of their peace and joy. ANTI-TATTLER.



_To prevent Skippers in Bacon._--Take of red pepper finely powdered
one spoonful for every joint of meat, and rub it on the meat with
the salt, when it is first cut up. It has been often tried and was
never known to fail in producing the above effect.



A DISCOURSE, READ BEFORE THE

Essex Agricultural Society,

In Massachusetts, February 21, 1820,

_Suggesting some Improvements in the Agriculture of the County._

BY TIMOTHY PICKERING, President of the Society.


At a Meeting of the Essex Agricultural Society, at Topsfield,
February 21, 1820,

Voted, That the thanks of the Society be presented to the Hon.
TIMOTHY PICKERING for his interesting Address, and that he be
requested to furnish a copy thereof for publication.--Attest,

  FREDERICK HOWES, _Secretary_.

DISCOURSE.

_Gentlemen_--The secretary has put into my hands a vote of the
Society, requesting me to "make to it such communications as may in
my opinion most conduce to the interest of Agriculture."

This was an unlooked for request. I have myself much to learn from
observing farmers, of longer experience, and whose attentions have
been exclusively devoted to husbandry. Mine, since I became a
farmer, have been diverted by other pursuits; so that at intervals
only my thoughts have been turned to this subject.

No one doubts the importance of our profession; and the actual
formation of our society is a declaration that improvements in it
are necessary.--But the field of agriculture is of boundless extent;
and though traversed for some thousands of years by the greater
portion of the human race, yet by no one, nor by all combined, has
a complete survey been accomplished. Every year, and every day,
presents something new: and even of old things, the practices of
ages, there still exist diversities of opinions. For instance,
which is preferable, deep or shallow ploughing?--Should manures be
spread on the surface, or be buried by the plough? If the latter, at
what depth, to produce the greatest effect, with the most lasting
fertility?--Should manure be applied in its rough, coarse, and
unfermented state, or, by keeping and repeated turnings, be more
or less rotted?--These are points which appear to me deeply to
affect the interests of agriculture. On these therefore I will give
you my opinion, enlightened by the observations of intelligent
husbandmen. I will then advert to a few other topics which demand
your attention; _dwelling_ on one of them--Root crops for the Food
of Live Stock--as lying at the foundation of an improved agriculture.

I. _On Deep Ploughing and Manuring._

For myself, I entertain no doubt of the utility of deep ploughing;
not at once, in our lands in general, but by an increase of two
or three inches at every annual ploughing, until the earth be
stirred and pulverized to the depth of ten or twelve inches. Indian
corn, planted in such a mass of loosened earth, would not, I am
persuaded, ever suffer by ordinary droughts.--Like a spunge, it
would absorb a vast quantity of rain water, and become a reservoir
to supply the wants of that and all other plants.--Nothing is
more common in a dry summer, than the rolling of the leaves of
corn; and that circumstance is often mentioned as an evidence of
the severity of the drought. This rolling of the leaves of Indian
corn, is the consequence, in part, of scant manuring, but still
more of shallow ploughing. Few, perhaps, are aware of the depth
to which the roots of plants will penetrate in a deeply loosened
earth. A gentleman,[11] much inclined to agricultural inquiries and
observations, informed me, near fifty years ago, that seeing some
men digging a well, in a hollow place, planted with Indian corn,
then at its full growth, he stopped to examine how far its roots had
descended; and he traced them to the depth of nine feet. The soil
was an accumulation of rich earth which had run or been thrown into
the hollow.

  [11] Peter Oliver, Esq. then a Judge of the Superior Court of
  Massachusetts.

The seed of the common turnip, sown in warm weather, and on
a soil sufficiently moist, I have known to vegetate in about
eight-and-forty hours; and in only four or five days afterwards, I
found the plants had sent down roots to the depth of four or five
inches.

I have often noticed forest trees blown down by violent winds, whose
roots, of the same species, were very differently formed. Such as
had grown in grounds having a hard, impenetrable pan of clayey
gravel, at the depth of twelve or eighteen inches from the surface,
exhibiting a flat mass of roots; while others, torn up from a deep
loam, or loamy gravel, showed downward roots of several feet in
length.

About five months ago, I received from England a pamphlet written
by one of the most distinguished agricultural writers in that
country--Arthur Young. It was a lecture read, a few years before,
to the British Board of Agriculture, of which Mr. Young was the
Secretary. Its title is, "On the Husbandry of three celebrated
British Farmers, Messrs. Bakewell, Arbuthnot and Ducket,"--all
eminent for genius, enterprise, application, and long experience. It
was to do honour to their memories, "and to bring to recollection
the means by which those celebrated practitioners, in the first
and most important of all arts, carried their agriculture to a
perfection unknown before," that the lecture was written and
published. And this, Mr. Young observes, would be more peculiarly
useful, because those men, "confining themselves to practice alone,
had left no register of their own meritorious deeds." I will
present to you the substance of the information contained in this
pamphlet, as in itself very important, and because the practice of
Arbuthnot and Ducket has a direct bearing on the points I am now
considering--DEEP PLOUGHING and MANURING.

"Mr. Ducket had sand, and sandy soils alone, to deal with; but
Arbuthnot's land classed among those harsh, wet, tenacious loams,
which are usually called clay, and ought to be esteemed such,
relative to every circumstance that attaches to difficulty and
management." Passing by what Mr. Young says of Arbuthnot's draining
operations, I content myself with mentioning the principal of that
improvement: "Lay your land dry, whatever may be the method pursued,
before you attempt any thing else."

"In respect to tillage, Mr. Arbuthnot carried it to great
perfection: He invented a swing plough for a pair of horses and the
general depth of six inches, and a much larger one with wheels, for
gaining the depth of 12, and even of eighteen, for some peculiar
crops, especially madder. Upon the advantages of deep ploughing he
never had the least hesitation; but always declared that in all
he had read or heard, he never met with one argument against the
practice that had with him the smallest weight."--"In the essential
operation of ploughing, he considered one earth [that is, one
ploughing] well timed, and of a right depth, as being much more
efficacious than that repetition of tillage so common in every
district."[12]

  [12] The repetition of tillage here reprobated, refers, I presume,
  to the numerous ploughing given by many English farmers, at that
  period, preparatory to the putting in of their crops; which the
  single, deep and "efficacious" ploughing of Arbuthnot rendered
  unnecessary.--Were our ploughing for Indian Corn and Root Crops
  alike _deep_ and _efficacious, before planting_, shallow tillage
  (called horse hoeing) with light ploughs, during their growth, would
  suffice.

A judicious rotation, or round of crops, has long been considered,
in England, essential to good husbandry: and so it is by skilful
farmers in our own country; particularly in the middle States,
where clover, so highly important in the rotation, has, for more
than thirty years, been rendered wonderfully productive, by the
application of plaster of Paris. The most usual course in England
has been (excepting on stiff clayey soils) first year turnips,
manured and kept clean by hoeing; the second year barley, with
clover seed; the third year the clover mown for hay; and its second
crop, at wheat seed time, ploughed in, and, where necessary to fill
the seams, the ground harrowed, the wheat sown, and then harrowed
in. This is called "wheat upon a clover lay."--But by the long and
frequent repetition of clover, (that is, once in _four_ years)
in their rotations, lands in England became (as they express it)
"sick of clover:" and I have been informed that some lands in our
middle States, long subjected to the like application of clover,
exhibit like symptoms of disease or failure. But Mr. Arbuthnot
introduced clover once in _three_ years, without suffering by such
more frequent repetition. "He attributed the failure of this plant
to shallow and ill-executed ploughing; the result (says Mr. Young)
justified his opinion."

Mr. Young mentions a lecture he had read to the Board of
Agriculture, "on the means by which a farm can be made, by a right
proportion of all the products, to support itself, without foreign
assistance, in a state of high fertility, a question depending on
the quantity or weight of dung resulting from the consumption in
litter of a given weight of straw." This lecture I have not seen.
But he considers the question as successfully decided, in Mr.
Arbuthnot's practice, in the following manner; 134 sheep and 30
lambs were turnip fed, in a pen on a headland, well littered with
straw: in six weeks they required nearly six tons of straw [to give
them clean and comfortable beds:] and in that time made 40 tons
of dung, equal to that brought from London [stable dung it is to
be presumed.] So every ton of litter produced near seven tons of
dung.--But this weight must have been obtained chiefly by the earth
of the headland absorbing the urine, of which, when fed on turnips,
sheep make great quantities, and being finally mixed with their
dung and litter. This recital reminds me of the recommendation, in
my address to this Society, in May, 1818, to carry earth into the
barn yard, once in every two weeks, from spring to autumn; adding to
every layer of earth a coat of litter. I should then have advised a
plentiful spreading of litter, had I not known that our courses of
husbandry in Essex yielded very little straw.

In the same communication to the Society, I presented my ideas
on the proper application of manure; to wit, _always to bury it
up quickly, when carried to the field_, to prevent great loss by
its exposure to the sun and air; remarking, that the essence of
manure was lost, not by _sinking_ into the earth below the roots
of cultivated plants, but by _rising_ into the atmosphere, and so
fleeing away. Here, also, I have the satisfaction of seeing the
theory I had formed nineteen years ago (in the manner suggested
in that communication) supported by the opinions and practices of
such eminent agriculturists as Messrs. Arbuthnot and Ducket. After
noticing Arbuthnot's cultivation of madder, an article requiring a
rich soil and extremely deep tillage, Mr. Young says, "there was
one circumstance in his management, which, being applicable to more
important articles, merits a more durable attention; this is, the
depth to which he ploughed in the dung: his tillage went to that of
eighteen inches; and he conceived there was no danger of losing,
by this circumstance, either _vegetable_ or _animal_ manures, as
_their_ tendency, contrary to all _fossil_ ones, was not to _sink_,
but to _rise_ in the atmosphere." Fossil manures are lime, marl,
plaster of Paris, and other substances dug out of the earth, which
increase the productive powers of soils.

Mr. Ducket's manner of applying dung, although his was a sand farm,
was similar to Mr. Arbuthnot's.--"Immediately connected with the
depth of tillage, is that to which dung may be safely deposited. He
[Mr. Ducket] had not the least apprehension of losing it by deep
ploughing; but freely turned it down to two or three times the depth
common among his neighbours." Yet Mr. Young says, that farmers (and
good farmers too) persist in a contrary practice. But he adds,
"Enlightened individuals, thinly scattered, know better: having
convinced themselves that Mr. Ducket's practice is not only safe but
beneficial;" and then names one who "ploughs in his dung as deeply
as his ploughs can go, turning it in nine inches, and would bury it
twelve, did he stir to such a depth."

Confirmatory of the correctness of the practice of these two
celebrated English farmers, is the fact stated by Mr. John Sinclair,
President of the British Board of Agriculture, in his account of the
Improved Scottish Husbandry. He mentions one farmer who ridged his
carrot ground, and buried the manure sixteen or seventeen inches
deep, the ridges thirty inches wide. This farmer preferred, as a
manure, a well prepared compost of peat-moss[13] and dung, ten tons,
or double cart-loads, per English acre. "The dung (or compost) being
at the bottom, makes the tap root of the carrot push immediately
down, and swell to an enormous size; the roots being often sixteen
inches in girt, and 18 or twenty inches in length."

  [13] In Scotland their peat-lands are called peat-mosses.

To return to Mr. Ducket. His deep ploughing (says Mr. Young) was
not practised above once in two or three years, and the successive
tillage shallow. "By such deep ploughing, seldom given, Mr. Ducket
conceived that a due degree of moisture was preserved in his _light_
land, by means of which his crops were flourishing in seasons
of drought which destroyed those of his neighbours: and no one
could more severely condemn the ideas which governed the Norfolk
farmers, in leaving what they called their _pan_ unbroken at the
depth only of 4 or 5 inches.--The operation of ploughing he thought
could scarcely be given too seldom, provided when given it was done
effectively: and he always carried this paucity of tillage as far
as circumstances would permit: thus I have known him put in seven
crops with only four ploughings." In another part of his lecture,
Mr. Young says, "If I were to name the circumstance which more than
any other governed his (Mr. Ducket's) practice, I should say that
the whole was founded in trench ploughing; and that the principle
which governed this practice (a principle thoroughly impressed upon
his mind, as well as on the minds of those who draw intelligent
conclusions) was that of giving as little tillage as possible to
sandy soils."

"The next circumstance which I shall advert to (says Mr. Young)
in the husbandry of Mr. Ducket, is the use of _long, fresh dung_,
instead of that which in common management is turned and mixed till
it becomes _rotten_: and in justice to his memory, I shall read the
short recital of his practice, as I printed it three-and-twenty
years ago. "Dependent on the Trench-Plough,[14] is Mr. Ducket's
system of dunging. He conceives, and I apprehend very justly, that
the more dunghills are stirred and turned over, and rotted, the
more of their virtue is lost. It is not a question of straw merely
wetted; but good _long_ dung he esteems more than that quantity of
_short_ dung, which time will convert the former to. _Two_ loads
of _long_ may become _one_ of _short_; but the two are much more
valuable than the one. Without the Trenching-plough, however, his
opinion would be different. If long dung is ploughed in, in the
common manner, with lumps and bundles sticking out at many places
along every furrow, which lets the sun and air into the rest that
seems covered, he thinks, so used, it is mostly lost, or given
to the winds: in such a case, short rotted manure will be better
covered, and should be preferred. But with his plough nothing of
this happens; and it enables him to use his dung in such a state as
gives him a large quantity instead of a small one. The good sense
of these observations must be obvious at the first blush." Mr.
Young adds--"_The use of_ FRESH _instead of_ ROTTEN _dung, is, in
my opinion, one of the greatest agricultural discoveries that has
been made in the present age_." He then states a striking experiment
made by himself--67 small cart loads of fresh yard dung produced
two successive crops of potatoes, yielding together 742 bushels;
at the same time, the same quantity of yard dung, after 6 months
rotting, yielded 708 bushels, leaving [to the fresh long dung] a
superiority of 34 bushels. But had the fresh dung been kept as long
as the other, it would have required at least twice, perhaps thrice
as much, to have produced the quantity used." [That is, twice or
three times 67 loads of fresh long dung, if kept and often turned
and mixed to produce fermentation and rotting, would have shrunk,
or been reduced, to 67 loads of short rotten dung.] "If the crops
therefore had been only equal, still the advantage [of the fresh
dung] would have been most decisive."

  [14] The Trench-Plough of Mr. Ducket's invention was so admirably
  contrived as completely to bury whatever was intended to be turned
  in. Mr. Young says he saw him turn down a crop of rye, six feet
  high, so that not an atom was left visible; and yet the depth
  did not exceed eight inches. Trench ploughing has sometimes been
  effected in this country by a second plough following in the same
  furrow after the first, and going a few inches deeper.

"I shall not quit (says Mr. Young) the husbandry of two men who
carried tillage, on soils so extremely different, to its utmost
perfection, without remarking the circumstances in which they
agreed. Both were equal friends to deep ploughing; both rejected
the common repetition of tillage, and reduced the number of their
operations to a degree that merits attention; both rejected
fallows; and both ploughed deeply for depositing manure, without
any apprehension of losing it. These are very important points in
Practical Agriculture."

To this account of the successful practices of these two celebrated
English farmers, it may be useful to subjoin a few observations. I
have thought it proper so far to present them in detail, in order
to develope principles; not expecting a _precise_ adoption of
their practices; which indeed, without their or similar superior
ploughs and other implements, would be impracticable: but with such
instruments as we possess, or may easily obtain, we can materially
increase the depth of our ploughing, and I hope contrive effectually
to cover our manure. _This should be wholly applied to Tillage
Crops_; for which the manuring should be so ample as to ensure a
succession of good crops through the whole rotation, without the
aid of any additional manure, especially for wheat, rye, barley or
oats: for besides increasing the seeds of weeds (with which all our
lands are too much infested) such additional manuring, _immediately_
applied to the small grain crops, renders them more liable to injury
from mildews. Of this I am fully satisfied, as well from numerous
statements of facts which I have seen in books of husbandry,
as from the circumstances under which remarkable mildews have
otherwise been noticed. One of our countrymen, who wrote a short
essay on the subject prior to the American Revolution, has given
the only solution of the causes of mildews that has ever appeared
satisfactory to me: perhaps at some future time I may find leisure
to show the correspondence of facts with his principles.[15]

  [15] This essay, subscribed "A New-England-Man," is published in the
  2d volume of the Memoirs of the Philadelphia Society of Agriculture.

  (To be continued.)



_To Farmers._--In the winter of 1818-19, a gentleman in this city
made the following experiment. He placed a turkey in an enclosure
about four or five feet long, two feet wide, and three or four feet
high. He excluded as much light as he could without preventing a
circulation of air, and fed the turkey with soft brick broken into
pieces, with charcoal also broken, and with six grains of corn per
day. Fresh water was daily supplied. The box or coop in which the
turkey was placed, he always locked up with his own hands, and is
perfectly confident that nobody interfered with the experiment.

At the end of one month he invited a number of his neighbours among
others two physicians. The turkey, now very large and heavy, was
killed and opened by the physicians, and was found to be filled up
full with fat. The gizzard and entrails were dissected, and nothing
was found but a residuum of charcoal and brick. To conclude the
examination satisfactorily, the turkey was eaten, and found to be
very good.

Last winter he again repeated the experiment with the same success.

The circumstance by which he was induced to make the experiment
is a very curious one. One of his neighbours informed him, that
being driven from the city by the fever of 1793, his family
recollected that some fowls that had lived in a kind of loft over
his workshop, had been forgotten in the hurry of their removal, and
would certainly be starved. They were absent six or eight weeks,
and on the retiring of the pestilence returned. To their great
astonishment, the fowls were not only alive, but very fat, although
there was _nothing but charcoal and shavings_ that they could
have eaten, and some water that had been left in the trough of a
grindstone had supplied them with drink.

  [_Nat. Recorder._



_Introduction of Glass Making in France._

(From Parke's Chymical Essays.)


The government of France, in the early part of the fourteenth
century, took great pains to improve the manufacture of glass, and
ordained that none but gentlemen, or the sons of the nobility,
should be allowed to exercise the trade, or even to work as
artificers in the manufactories of this most highly esteemed
commodity.--In consequence of this injunction, a company of persons,
all born gentlemen, was incorporated, and obtained many important
privileges and immunities from the state; particularly that of being
allowed to work at this curious art without derogating from their
nobility. It is indeed asserted by the writer,[16] who is the best
authority we have on this subject, that there never was an instance
of any one being attainted, to whom these privileges had been
granted; for they conducted themselves so irreproachably, that these
orders were invariably transmitted inviolate to their posterity. In
the year 1453, Anthony de Brossord, Lord of St. Martin, and prince
of the blood royal, finding the business of glass making to be so
considerable; and knowing that it did not derogate from nobility,
obtained a grant from the Prince to establish a glass house in his
own county, with prohibition of any other; and in consequence of
this, the elder sons of that family continued uninterruptedly to
exercise the art till the latter end of the sixteenth century, when
the proprietor was killed while commanding a troop at the siege of
Chartres.--On the death of this individual the younger sons of the
same family undertook to carry on the art, and continued in it for
more than a century. Whether the trade continues still in the same
line, I have not been able to ascertain.

  [16] Blancourt.

An ancient family of the name of _Vaillant_, also obtained the
grant of a glass house, as a recompense for their valour and public
services, together with a poignard d'or, on azure, for their
arms.--Mr. Blancourt, who long resided in France, likewise notices,
that at the time he wrote, they had many other great families among
them, who were descended from gentleman glass-makers that had
declined following the art; and that some of these had been honoured
with purple, and with the highest dignities and offices in the state.



FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE.

_Anecdote of Anthony Benezet_,

     Not inserted in Vaux's interesting Memoir of that Philanthropist.


Soon after the arrival of the Chevalier Luzerne, minister from
the court of France, Benezet called on him with a French copy of
Barclay's Apology, with a view of informing him of the principles of
the Society of Friends. The minister being a Knight of Malta, and of
course at enmity with the Turks, appeared much surprised that any
professed Christians should object to the destruction of the Ottoman
Empire--which increased on being informed that his profession
would not permit taking the life of any man: on which the minister
observed that it was _very good_, but too _straight_ for him to
object to killing a Musselman.

The interview prepared the way for frequent visits to the
embassador, who always received him with pleasure, the latter often
observing that he had but a small body; but added, extending his
arms nearly at full length, as if to embrace a large object--"_Oh
what a capacious soul he possesses!_"--evincing by his whole
conduct, that he valued him as an extraordinary man, possessing true
Christian principles.

  G.



MISCELLANY.


_The English, a Foreign Tongue._--We extract the following from a
French paper:

     "An etymologist has lately published the following analysis
     of the English language. Its vocabulary, he says, is composed
     of 6621 words of Latin origin, 4361 of French, 2068 of Saxon,
     1288 of Greek, 660 of Dutch, 229 of Italian, 117 of German, 11
     of Gaelic, 83 of Spanish, 81 of Danish, 18 of Arabic, besides
     many others of ancient Teutonic, Hebrew, Swedish, Portuguese,
     Flemish, Russian, Egyptian, Persian, Cimbrian, and Chinese!! The
     same etymologist pretends, that in Shakspeare, Pope, Swift, and
     Milton, _there are not many more than a hundred words purely
     English_!"

So that it would appear, that when we meet an acquaintance in the
street, and accost him with "How do you do this morning?" and he
replies "pretty well, I thank you," we are probably speaking half
a dozen languages at once. What "learned Thebans" we must be! In
this way a man who has a tolerable understanding of _Dilworth's
spelling book_ must be no inconsiderable linguist while one, who
can read _Johnson at sight_, must be a perfect _Polyglot_. The poor
Burgeois gentilhomme was quite amazed to find, that he had been
speaking _prose_ all his life without knowing it; and we are no
less astonished on discovering that we had been talking _Russian_,
_Egyptian_, _Persian_, _Cimbrian_, _Teutonic_, and _Chinese_, for
years, without having ever dreamed of it. There have been great
controversies among the learned as to what was that formidable
dialect, which arose at Babel, out of the confusion of tongues, but
after this discovery we can have no doubt that it is that very
English which we all speak, and instead of High Dutch, which some
have supposed was the language used by Adam in Paradise, we do now
verily believe, that it was that _pure English_, of which so few
traces have been left!--_Lou. Adv._


"_A Stitch in time, saves nine._"--A celebrated French writer on
political economy, M Say, has this story:--'Being in the country,
I had an example of one of those small losses which a family is
exposed to through negligence. For the want of a latchet of small
value, the wicket of a barn yard looking to the fields, was often
left open; every one who went through, drew the door to; but having
no means to fasten it, it remained flapping: the poultry escaped,
and were lost. One day a fine pig got out and ran into the woods.
Immediately all the world was after it; the gardener, the cook, the
dairy-maid, all run to recover the swine. The gardener got sight
of him first,--and jumping over the ditch to stop him, he sprained
his ancle, and was confined a fortnight to the house.--The cook, on
her return, found all the linen she had left to dry by the fire,
burned; and the dairy-maid having run off before she had tied up
the cows, one of them broke the leg of a colt in the stable. The
gardener's lost time was worth twenty crowns, valuing the pain at
nothing; the linen burned, and the colt spoiled, were worth as much
more. Here a loss of forty crowns and much pain, trouble, vexation,
and inconvenience, for want of a latch, which would not cost three
pence, and all through careless neglect.'


_Rats._--The following curious mode of catching rats is extracted
from the works of Muller, an apothecary of Weringerode, in Germany:--

Procure a large cask, and place it in the vicinity of places
infested with rats. During the first week, this vessel is employed
only to allure the rats to visit the solid top of the cask, by
means of boards or planks arranged in a sloping direction to the
floor, which are to be strewed with oatmeal daily, or any other
food grateful to the palate.--Being thus lulled into security,
and accustomed to find a regular supply for their meals, a skin
of parchment is substituted for the wooden top of the cask, and
the former is cut for several inches in the centre in transverse
directions, so as to yield on the slightest pressure. At the same
time, a few gallons of water, to the depth of six or seven inches,
are poured into the empty cask, in the middle of which a brick
or stone is placed, so as to project one or two inches above the
fluid, and afford to one rat a place of refuge. These measures being
taken, the top of the cask should be furnished with the proper
baits, in order to induce the marauders to repeat their visits. No
sooner does one plunge through the section of the parchment into
the vessel, than it retreats to the brick or stone, and commences
its lamentations for relief. Others follow, and share the same
fate. A dreadful conflict then commences to obtain possession of
the dry assylum. Battles follow in rapid succession, attended with
such loud and noisy shrieks, that all the rats in the neighbourhood
hasten to the fatal spot, where they experience similar disasters.
Thus, hundreds may be caught by stratagem, which might be greatly
facilitated by exposing a living rat taken in a trap, or purchased
from a professional rat catcher.


_Important to Millers._--A very valuable machine has lately
been invented (and is now in operation) by Richard French, of
Morrisville, (Pa.) for cleansing all kinds of grain and grass seeds.
This machine cleanses the grain completely of the white cap, and at
the same time rubs off the dust that always adheres to grain, and is
the cause of specks in flour. The grain at the same time receives a
fine polish. It operates equally on rye and buckwheat, cleansing it
from all the dust and fuz which darken and cause grit in the flour,
and are so liable to fret the bolting cloth. It is the opinion of
a number of millers, that one barrel of flour may be obtained more
from every hundred bushels of wheat, cleaned by this machine, than
from the same quantity in the usual way. This machine will remain at
Morrisville, for public inspection, a few weeks, after which it will
be removed to Brandywine. Millers and others, who wish to make more
and better flour, as there is no loss of grain, are invited to call
and see the machine in operation. I believe they will not regret the
time and trouble of so doing.

  [_Trenton paper._


_Rhode Island._--The thrifty little state of Rhode Island is, at
this time, the most prosperous of any in the Union, notwithstanding
the multitude of small banking institutions that abound there, from
the force of domestic industry applied to manufactures; which, in
despite of every obstacle, is in a condition that must be considered
a happy one, compared with that of most other places; a most rigid
economy, in some measure, supplying the want of public protection,
except in the people themselves--who chiefly consume the products of
their respective neighbourhoods.--The balance of trade is generally
in favour of the state, and the want of specie is not felt by
those who have a right to demand it, for the banks are in a very
_comfortable_ state.


_Maine._--The first organization of the government of the state of
Maine, took place on Wednesday, May 31st, at Portland. John Chandler
was unanimously chosen Speaker of the Senate, and Benjamin Ames
chosen Speaker of the House of Representatives, also unanimously.
General William King elected governor, by 20,000 votes out of
something over that number, was qualified next day.


_Oil Stones._--Within a few weeks past a body of very superior
oil-stones has been discovered in the neighbourhood of Easton,
(Penn.) We believe they were first discovered on the farm of
George Ibrie, Esq. on the river Lehigh, in Williams township. The
bed, however, is not confined to that farm alone, but extends to
a considerable distance on each side of the Lehigh. They have
heretofore been found lying on the surface of the earth, and it
is matter of astonishment they were not sooner discovered.--The
carpenters of that place have almost entirely substituted them for
the Turkey stones heretofore used for setting tools; believing them
to be superior to those of Turkey, and infinitely better than those
gotten near Oley, which they somewhat resemble in colour.--The
discovery is certainly valuable to the mechanics, as the Turkey
stones have sold there for 75 or 100 cents, and the Oley stones at
25 cents per lb.


_Longevity of the Land Tortoise._--An article dated Sunbury, (Penn.)
June 15, says, that as a person was lately rolling logs near
Shamokin creek, he discovered a land tortoise, and through curiosity
picked it up, when the following engraving was observed upon the
under shell:

  "Thomas Musgrave, 1712;"

and immediately below, in large capitals,

  "ROBERT HUNTER, 1790"--

the former having been engraved 108, and the latter 30 years ago. He
engraved his own name below, and set the Recorder of ages at liberty.


_Great crop._--A. Mr. Blakeman, at Silver creek, Indiana, has
published that he raised last year 1350 bushels of shelled corn on
_ten_ acres of newly turned prairie land.


_Western navigation._--The Louisiana Advertiser, of the 6th of May,
gives the names and destination of _twenty-three_ steam-boats then
lying in the port of New Orleans!


_Pennsylvania Hospital._--The expenditures of the Pennsylvania
Hospital the last year were about 55,000 dollars. The number of
patients during the year ending April 22, 1820, was 945. The deaths
were 52. Persons relieved 81. Cured 428. Remain 209. Eloped 23.


_Salt water._--The whole western country seems to be _under_-flowed
with salt water. Some late borings through the rock, at depths of
from 259 to 317 feet, at Cannonsburg, Pa. have been completely
successful.


_Fire at Savannah._--An advertisement from the London Phenix Fire
Office states, that the loss occurring in Savannah, by the great
fire of January last, swept away every thing that had been received
for premiums during twelve years, and as much more.


_British Revenue, &c._--The _ad valorem_ duty, on British
manufactured goods, exported from Liverpool, amounted, for the first
quarter of the year 1819, to upwards of 13,000_l._ For the first
quarter of 1820, the amount was only 5,700_l._ A great falling off,
indeed.

Average price of grain in England and Wales, from the returns up
to the 15th April--Wheat, 69s. 2d.; Rye, 41s. 9d.; Barley, 36s.
5d.--[Grain at these prices would afford a fine market for the
surplus product of the United States; but England will not receive
our bread stuffs; she prefers to keep up, and to a most unreasonable
extent, the market for her own agriculturists.]


_Origin of Almanacks._--The ancient Saxons used to engrave upon
certain square sticks, about a foot in length, the courses of the
_moons_ for the whole year, whereby they could always certainly tell
when the new moons, full moons, and changes, should happen; and such
carved sticks they called _Al-mon-aght_ (_all-mon-heed, i. e._)
the regard or observation of all the moons. There is in St. John's
College, Cambridge, a Saxon almanack exactly answering to the above
description.


_Iron Boat._--A London paper of May 4, says, that a passage boat, of
malleable iron, now plies on the Forth and Clyde Canal, in Scotland.
It is called the Vulcan, and succeeds to admiration. The length
is 63 feet; beam, 13 feet; depth, 5 feet; draught of water, when
launched, 22 inches abaft, and 19 inches forward--when fitted with
cabins, &c. 37 and 25 inches--when laden with two hundred passengers
and their baggage, under 48 inches, on an even keel. The weight of
iron employed was 12 tons 11-3/4 cwt. which is less than a wooden
vessel of the same dimensions. The iron is of the kind called scrap.


_A Great Eclipse of the Sun_ will take place on the 7th of September
next. This eclipse will be visible over an extent of more than four
millions square leagues, a surface nearly equal to a sixth part of
the earth, and resembling a kind of oval of about 7500 leagues in
circumference, comprising all Europe, the western part of Asia, all
Africa, as far as to Monopotapa, and a part of North America. The
eclipse will last three hours.


_Lord Thurlow._--This eminent lawyer's superiority of ability was
very early manifested both at school and at college. They extorted
submission from his equals, and impressed his seniors with respect.
The following anecdote is told of him.--Having been absent from
chapel, or committed some other offence which came under the
cognizance of the dean of the college, who, though a man of wit, was
not remarkable for his learning. The dean set Thurlow, as a task, a
paper in the Spectator to translate into Greek. This he performed
extremely well, and in very little time; but instead of carrying it
up to the dean, as he ought to have done, he took it to the tutor,
who was a good scholar, and a very respectable character. At this
the dean was exceedingly wroth, and had Mr. Thurlow convened before
the Masters and Fellows to answer for his conduct. Thurlow was
asked what he had to say for himself. He coolly, perhaps improperly
replied, "that what he had done proceeded not from disrespect, but
from a feeling of tenderness for the dean; he did not wish to puzzle
him!" The dean, greatly irritated, ordered him out of the room; and
then insisted that the Masters and Fellows ought immediately to
expel or rusticate him. This request was nearly complied with, when
two of the Fellows, wiser than the rest, observed, that expelling or
rusticating a young man for such an offence would perhaps do much
injury to the college, and expose it to ridicule; and that as he
would soon quit the college of his own accord to attend the Temple,
it would be better to let the matter rest, than irritate him by so
severe a proceeding. This advice was at length adopted.

Such was the consciousness which Thurlow felt of his towering
abilities, that long before he was called to the bar, he often
declared to his friends that he would one day be Chancellor of
England; and that the title he would take for his peerage, would be
Lord Thurlow, of Thurlow.


_Machine for crossing Rivers._--The mechanist, Xavier Michel,
residing at Offenbach, has invented a very simple and compact
machine, by the aid of which rivers may be crossed, and even the sea
attempted, without any danger of sinking. It is nearly five feet in
diameter, when unfolded. An opening of about thirteen inches in the
centre is destined to receive the traveller. When dismounted, this
apparatus is easily transported from place to place--for its entire
weight scarcely exceeds five pounds. This inventor has made a number
of experiments on the Rhine, all of which have been crowned with
entire success. He can make the machine move forward, or otherwise,
at pleasure, and without any great exertion. In order more fully
to prove the utility of his invention, M. Michel has determined to
embark at Khel, and descend the Rhine to its mouth.


_Cattle Scenting Rain._--Liable to long and parching droughts, the
author of "_Letters from Buenos Ayres, Chili_," &c. notices the
well-known instinct of cattle in scenting water at a wonderful
distance, and describes an occasion wherein it was displayed on the
approach of rain, in a similar manner as if a river or spring had
been found.

"The negroes were sent in different directions to see how far the
scorched grass extended, and were at a considerable distance when
the Father Provincial cried out, 'Look at the oxen, they smell
water:' we all eagerly turned to the poor panting animals, and saw
them stretch out their necks and raise their heads towards the
west, and snuff the air in a manner as if they would be certain of
obtaining drink could they but raise themselves in the air. At that
moment not a cloud nor a single breath of air was to be seen or
felt; but in a few minutes the cattle began to move about as if mad,
or possessed by some invisible spirit, snuffing the air with most
violent eagerness, and gathering closer and closer to each other;
and before we could form any rational conjecture as to what could
occasion their simultaneous motion, the most tremendous storm came
on of thunder, lightning, and rain, I ever witnessed in my life.
The rain fell in perpendicular streams as if all the fountains of
heaven were suddenly broke loose; so that, in the space of a very
few minutes, torrents of water rolled around us, and the cattle
easily drank their fill at the spot on which they stood."--_Literary
Gazette._


_Irish Bulls._--The secretary of a celebrated Agricultural Society
in England, some years ago, in his rage for improvement, and not
being overburdened with understanding, sent an order to a bookseller
for Mr. and Miss Edgeworth's essay upon _Irish Bulls_, for the use
of their society, to assist the members in improving the breed of
cattle.


_Modern Inventions._--The improvements made in all arts and sciences
within the last 200 years have nearly doubled the present limitation
of life, in that we live more in less time.

The Egyptians were so ignorant of medicine, that, when any one was
sick, they called in as many persons as possible to see him, that,
if any one of them had the like distemper, he might say what was fit
for his cure.

Surgery was much the oldest branch of physick which they practised.--

Æsculapius was followed by a dog and a she-goat. The dog was taught
to lick all ulcerated wounds, and the goat's milk was given for all
diseases of the stomach and lungs.


_Receipt to make Yeast._--Three gallons water, two quarts loose
hops, boiled together about three hours in brass or bell metal,
strain them off from hops, and at once stir in a quart of flour.
When cool stir in a pint of good yeast, and half a pound of brown
sugar, to remain open in a piggin or jar 15 or 20 hours, and to be
stirred often. Put it then in stone jugs about three fourths full,
cork them well and place them in a cool situation. Your jugs ought
to be of such a size only to contain yeast for the usual quantity of
bread baked at a time. One gill of yeast is sufficient for a common
sized loaf of bread, that is made from a plate full of flour.


_Boots without Seams._--A patent has lately been obtained for the
manufacture of boots without seams.--For this purpose, the patentee
proposes that the thigh of the beast should be flayed without
cutting open, and afterwards dressed and curried upon blocks. The
boot top upon the same principle is to be made of the shoulder,
prepared in like manner.



FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE.


     The stanzas inserted below are ascribed, it is believed with
     correctness, to the pen of the late Governor HOWELL, of New
     Jersey. The occasion which gave rise to them, was that of his
     leaving home to join the army which was embodied to suppress
     the Western Insurrection. They breathe a delicacy of feeling,
     and a warmth of attachment, alike honourable to the author as a
     husband and a man. They likewise illustrate, very forcibly, the
     true character of WAR, whose approach is witnessed with sadness
     and sorrow, by all the endearing charities of domestic life.

     I.



THE SOLDIER'S ADIEU.

    Ah! Clara, cease--those silent tears
      Steal down thy cheeks in vain;
    Kind hope shall chase away thy fears,
      Till I return again:
    But wheresoe'er our route shall be,
    My heart shall still encamp with thee.

    Why should we lose the single hour,
      Which time accords to love,
    Suppress that sigh, I own its power,
      Yet joy from hope improve:
    But wheresoe'er our route shall be,
    My heart shall still encamp with thee.

    Let no foreboding fears alarm
      That regulated mind,
    Thy innocence shall shield from harm
      Thy soldier far disjoined:
    But wheresoe'er our route shall be,
    My heart shall still encamp with thee.

    Let idle tales of fancied wo,
      Ne'er wake for me a fear,
    Since honour calls, prepared I go,
      Yet dread that parting tear:
    But wheresoe'er our route shall be,
    My heart shall still encamp with thee.

    Start not my fair!--that morning gun
      Proclaims 'tis dawn of day,
    And now the Reveille's begun,
      To hail the morning grey:
    But wheresoe'er our route shall be,
    My heart shall still encamp with thee.

    The general-hark! Oh the adieu!
      Permit a last embrace,
    The troops they march, and I'll pursue,
      Farewell that angel face:
    But wheresoe'er our route shall be,
    My heart shall still encamp with thee.



FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE.


EVENING.


    The dusky shadows from the east that rise,
      Steal midway o'er the heavens; the blazing car
    Of Day is sunk; and Sunset's gorgeous dyes
      Fade fast away. Eve's solitary star,
    Watching their golden pomp with kindling eye,
      New trims her virgin lamp: th' unruffled tide
    Gives back a liquid light, while shadows lie
      Deep, broad and strong, the wood-crown'd shores beside.
    How beautiful! all earthly passions fly
      This consecrated hour. The distant bird
    In some sequestered wild mourns on; the fire-fly
      Lights her nuptial torch; the sounds that stirr'd
    Die one by one away. An hour like this
      Is balm unto the soul, steeps every sense in bliss.

    Ω



TO THE EDITORS OF THE RURAL MAGAZINE.


     The following is taken from a manuscript book of rare pieces,
     which I have been collecting for upwards of forty years. C. E.

_On the Return of the New Year._

    God's vast existence ne'er decays,
      His age doth never grow,
    Past, present, future, in his sight,
      Are one eternal NOW.

    Man measures out his fleeting state
      By motions in the skies,
    And like his own frail vesture, wears
      With every hour that flies.

    Successive moments make one day,
      Successive days one year;
    The moments past shall ne'er return,
      Though seasons like appear.

    Still a new spring shall bless the earth,
      And a new harvest rise,
    But the last year shall ne'er again
      Revisit mortal eyes.

    Old Time, with his keen-pointed scythe,
      Consumes the life of man;
    Our period's less'ning from the hour
      Our beings first began.

    Each year fulfills some new event
      Heaven long decreed before,
    Removes unnumbered lives away,
      And gives unnumber'd more.

    Soon shall the appointed angel stand
      O'er earth, and air, and sea,
    And swear by him that ever lives,
      That time no more shall be.

    Then shall the league of nature cease,
      The sun forsake his way,
    And years and ages lose their name,
      In one eternal day.



BANK NOTE EXCHANGE,

AT PHILADELPHIA--_June 27th, 1820_.

                                         Per cent Disc't.

  U. S. BRANCH BANK Notes,              1/2

  RHODE ISLAND--generally,                1

  CONNECTICUT--generally,                 2

  MASSACHUSETTS--Boston,                  1
    Country generally,                           4-6

  NEW YORK--City Bank Notes,           par.
    Country generally,                           2-5

  NEW JERSEY--generally,               par.
    Patterson Bank and Sussex Bank,                1

  PENNSYLVANIA--Farmer's Bank, of }
    Lancaster; Easton; Delaware            }
    County, at Chester;                    }
    Chester County, at Westchester;        }    par.
    Farmer's Bank,                         }
    Buck's County; Montgomery              }
    County                                 }

    Northampton; Susquehanna               }
    Bridge Company; York                   }  2-1/2-3
    Bank, Chambersburg,                    }

    Northumberland; Union,                        20
    Greensburg; Brownsville,                  12-1/2

    Farmers & Mechanics' Bank              }
    at Pittsburg,                          }      40

    New Hope Bridge Co.                            1

  DELAWARE--generally,                 par.
    Commercial Bank of Delaware;             }
    Branch of ditto at                       }     5
    Milford,                                 }
    Laurel Bank,                                  50

  MARYLAND--Baltimore Banks,            1/2
    Baltimore City Bank,                           5
    Annapolis; Hagerstown,                       2-3
    Snowhill,                                     50
    Havre de Grace,                            1-1/2

  VIRGINIA--Richmond and Branches,    1-1/2
    Country generally,                       2-1/2-3
    N. W. Bank, at Wheeling,               10-12-1/2

  COLUMBIA DISTRICT--Mech. Bank }
    of Alexandria,                       }         5
    Country generally,                             1

  NORTH CAROLINA--State Bank at }
    Raleigh, and Branches,               }         8

  Cape Fear; Newbern,                             10

  SOUTH CAROLINA--State Banks, generally, 3

  GEORGIA--State Banks, generally,        8
    Augusta Bridge Company,                       50

  TENNESSEE--few sales at any price.

  KENTUCKY--No sales.

  OHIO--Marietta,                        15
    Steubenville Bank,                         15-20
    Bank of Chillicothe,                           3
    Country generally,                         20-50


PRICES CURRENT--_June_ 27, 1820.

                                 Per    D. C.          D. C.

  Beef, Philad. Mess,           _bbl._  13.00   _to_   13.50

  Butter, Fresh                 _lb._    0.18    "      0.12-1/2

  Cotton Yarn, No. 10,              "    0.36

  Flax, Clean, (scarce)             "    0.16    "      0.19

  Flaxseed, Clean,              _hhd._  12.50

  Firewood, Hickory,            _cord_,  5.50    "      6.25
            Oak,                    "    3.00    "      4.00

  Flour--Wheat, super.          _bbl._   4.50    "      4.62-1/2
         Rye,                      "     2.62    "      2.75

  Grain--Wheat, (sales)        _bush._   0.90    "      0.95
         Rye,      do.             "     0.55    "      0.60
         Corn, Pa. do.             "     0.50    "      0.55
         Barley,
         Oats,                     "     0.37    "      0.40

  Hams--Jersey,                  _lb._   0.10    "      0.13
        Virginia, (none)

  Hemp, Kentucky,               _ton_, 160.00

  Leather--Sole (demand)         _lb._   0.24    "     0.27
         Upper, undrs'd.        _side_,  2.00    "     2.50

  Molasses,                     _gall._  0.50    "     0.55

  Nails, Cut, all sizes,          _lb._   0.07   "     0.12

  Pork, Jersey & Penn.
    Mess, (plenty)               _bbl._  15.00

  Plaster of Paris,               _ton_,  4.50

  Shingles--Cedar,                1000   25.00   "    27.00
            Cypress,                "     5.00

  Seed Clover,                   _bush._  8.50   "     9.00

  Wool--Merino, Clean,            _lb._   0.75
        Do. in Grease,              "     0.40   "     0.45
        Common,                     "     0.50


RAIN GUAGE AT PHILADELPHIA.

                          In. Hun.

  May 26,      Shower,      0.54
      29,        do.        0.04
      13,       Rain,       1.35
  June 6,      Shower,      0.19
      11 & 12,   Rain,      0.32
      13,        do.        0.35
      16,      Shower,      0.04
      25,        do.        0.30
  ------------------------------
  Total Rain from 17th Jan. to 31st May, 15.45


STATE OF THE THERMOMETER

           9 o'cl.  12 o'cl.  3 o'cl.

  May 27,    --       64       63
      29,    65       72       73
      30,    70       76       78
      31,    63       59       56
  June 1,    59       65       68
       2,    63       70       71
       3,    68       69       70
       5,    74       82       83
       6,    65       71       73
       7,    67       72       75
       8,    69       76       80
       9,    75       84       83
      10,    77       84       84
      12,    60       61       63
      13,    68       75       75
      14,    75       81       80
      15,    76       81       80
      16,    76       82       81
      17,    71       77       76
      19,    70       73       76
      20,    73       77       81
      21,    75       80       83
      22,    78       83       86
      23,    79       83       83
      24,    79       83       85
      26,    72       73       --


  PHILADELPHIA,
  PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY
  RICHARDS & CALEB JOHNSON,

  _No. 31, Market Street_,
  At $3.00 per annum.

  GRIGGS & DICKINSON, _Printers--Whitehall_.





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