tity is large enough to last out the day. Some members | of the family, generally the males, now drive out the herd to graze at a distance: the females remaining at home to arrange and clean the dwellings; to attend the young children; to make their mantles; and to clean, pound, and parch, the meal which had been obtained from some of the other tribes. Any of the men or boys who have not followed the herd, now fetch the water required for domestic purposes, or proceed to the neighbouring forest for fire-wood. About noon the herd is brought back to the vicinity of the morrt; and all those who followed it return home, except one or two left to take charge of the herd. The dairymen now make butter from the milk set aside in the morning, which has by this time become curdled; and also clarify the butter previously made, to convert it into ghee. Towards evening the herd draw together around the morrt; and as they approach the inclosure, the whole of the family, male and female, make them a kind of obeisance, by bringing up the right hand to the head, and extending it in an open manner. By this time the evening repast, consisting of different preparations of milk, meal, parched grain, and butter, has been prepared; and the family, after partaking of it. retire to rest. The Tudars are divided into two classes or branches; the one called Peikis or Terallis, who are competent to hold all sacred offices; the other Kutas or Tardas, who are competent only to hold minor ones within their own particular families, and who may be considered as the lay class. Till within the last few generations, these two branches kept themselves quite distinct, and never intermarried; but since that period, intermarriages have taken place, and the progeny of these are called Mookhs, a general term for children or descendants. The ordinary kind of life led by the Tudars is certainly an indolent one; their habits being rather slothful, except when acting from peculiarly-exciting causes, on which occasions they show much energy, and undergo great fatigue. They are almost totally unac quainted with the luxuries of life, not knowing even the use of salt; yet, notwithstanding these evidences of a low state of civilization, there is something in their general character which commands respect and even esteem. SINGULAR ANECDOTE. ABOUT the year 1706, I knew one Mr. Howe, a sensible, well-natured man, possessed of an estate of seven or eight hundred a year. He married a young lady of a good family in the west of England, her maiden name was Mallet; she was agreeable in her person and manners, and proved a very good wife. Seven or eight years after they had been married, he rose one morning very early, and told his wife he was obliged to go to the Tower to transact some particular business: the same day, at noon, his wife received a note from him, in which he informed her he was under a necessity of going to Holland, and should probably be absent three weeks or a month. He was absent from her seventeen years, during which time, she neither heard from him nor of him. The evening before he returned, whilst she was at supper, and with some of her friends and relations, particularly one Dr. Rose, a physician, who had married her sister, a billet, without any name subscribed, was delivered to her, in which the writer requested the favour of her to give him a meeting, the next evening, in the Bird-cage Walk, in St. James's Park. When she had read her billet, she tossed it to Dr. Rose, and laughing, "You see, brother," said she, "as old as I am, I have got a gallant." Rose, who perused the note with more attention, declared it to be Mr. Howe's hand-writing. This surprised all the company, and so much affected Mrs. Howe, that she fainted away; however, she soon recovered, when it was agreed that Dr. Rose and his wife, with the other gentleman and ladies who were then at supper, should attend Mrs. Howe, the next evening, to the Bird-cage Walk. They had not been there more than five or six minutes, when Mr. Howe came to them, and after saluting his friends and embracing his wife, walked home with her, and they lived together in harmony from that time to the day of his death. But the most curious part of my tale remains to be related. When Howe left his wife they lived in Jermyn street, near St. James's Church; he went no farther than to a little street in Westminster, where he took a room, for which he paid five or six shillings a wearing a black wig, (for he was a fair man,) he remained week, and changing his name, and disguising himself by in this habitation during the whole time of his absence". He had had two children by his wife when he departed from her, who were both living at that time; but they both died young in a few years after. However, during their lives, the second or third year after their father disappeared, Mrs. Howe was obliged to apply for an act of parliament to procure a proper settlement of her husband's estate, and a provision for herself out of it during his absence, as it was uncertain whether he was alive or dead: this act he suffered to be solicited and passed, and enjoyed the pleasure of reading the progress of it in the votes, in a little coffeehouse, near his lodging, which he frequented. Upon his quitting his house and family in the manner I have mentioned, Mrs. Howe at first imagined, as she could not conceive any other cause for such an abrupt elopement, that he had contracted a large debt unknown to her, and by that means involved himself in difficulties which he could not easily surmount; and for some time she lived in continual apprehensions of demands from creditors, of seizures, executions, &c. But nothing of this kind happened; on the contrary, he not only left his estate quite free and unincumbered, but he paid the bills of every tradesman with whom he had any dealings; and upon examining his papers, in due time after he was gone, proper receipts and discharges were found from all persons with whom he had any manner of transactions or money concerns. Mrs. Howe, after the death of her children, thought proper to lessen her family of servants, and the expenses of her housekeeping; and therefore removed from her house in Jermyn street to a little house in Brewer street, near Golden square. Just over against her lived one Salt, a corn-chandler. About ten years after Howe's abdication, he contrived to make an acquaintance with Salt, and was at length in such a degree of intimacy with him, that he usually dined with Salt once or twice a week. From the room in which they ate, it was not difficult to look into Mrs. Howe's dining-room, where she generally sate and received her company; and Salt, who believed Howe to be a bachelor, frequently recommended his own wife to him as a suitable match. During the last seven years of this gentleman's absence, he went every Sunday to St. James's Church, and used to sit in Mr. Salt's seat, where he had a view of his wife, but could not easily be seen by her. After he returned home, he never would confess what was the real cause of such a singular conduct; apparently there was none. But whatever it was, he was certainly ashamed to own it. Dr. Rose has often said to me, that he believed his brother Howe would never have returned to his wife, if the money which he took with him, which was supposed to have been one or two thousand pounds, had not been all spent. And he must have been a good economist, and frugal in his manner of living, otherwise his money would scarcely have held out; for I imagine that he had his whole fortune by him, I mean what he carried away with him in money or bank-bills, and daily took out of his bag, like the Spaniard in Gil Blas, what was sufficient for his expenses.-Dr. KING'S Anecdotes of his Own Times. *London is the only place in all Europe where a man can find a secure retreat, or remain, it he pleases, many years unknown. If he pays constantly for his lodging, for his provisions, and for whatever else he wants, nobody will ask a question concerning him, or inquire whence he comes, or whither he goes. + And yet I have seen him after his return addressing his wife in the language of a young bridegroom. And I have been assured by some of his most intimate friends, that he treated her during the rest of their lives with the greatest kindness and affection. CowPER, the poet, wrote to a friend who had left off wearing a wig: "I give you joy of your own hair. No doubt you are a considerable gainer by being disperiwigged. The best wig is that which most resembles the natural hair; why then should he that has hair enough of his own, have recourse to imitation? I have little doubt but that if an arm or a leg could have been taken off with as little pain as attends the amputation of a curl or a lock of hair, the natural limb would have been thought less becoming, or less convenient, by some men, than a wooden one, and been disposed of accordingly." 627-2 THE COMMON MANGLE THE CHINESE MANGLE. THE common mangie is a well-known machine, and of great importance to the laundress, as forming a quick and economical method of smoothing the larger articles of linen and cotton furniture, table cloths, &c., which cannot so conveniently be done by the use of heated irons. Yet there is a very great amount of labour required in the working of it as ordinarily constructed, and it may not be unacceptable to our readers to be made acquainted with some ingenious attempts to improve this useful domestic machine. Most persons are aware that the common mangle consists of an oblong rectangular wooden chest, filled with stones, which load it to the degree of pressure that it should exercise upon two cylinders on which it rests, and which by rolling backwards and forwards over the linen spread upon a polished table underneath, render it smooth and level. Until about thirty years ago, the chest was moved backwards and forwards on the rollers by means of a handle attached to an upper roller or windlass, to which straps from each end of the moving box were attached. In this case the linen was wrapped round the rollers, and the motion of the heavy chest had frequently to be arrested and changed. The excessive labour required for this purpose led to the important improvement effected by Mr. Baker, of Fore Street, London, by which the unwieldy chest was moved with great facility backwards and forwards, by a continuous motion of the handle in one direction; and by the addition of a fly-wheel to equalize the motion, a great amount of muscular exertion was saved. This invention is extremely ingenious, and deserves a farther notice. Fig. 1. of the box, B, which contains the weights. In the centre of this bridge stand two upright pieces, seven inches apart, and supporting the wheel c. This wheel is twenty inches in diameter, and has a series of sixty wrought-iron pegs, projecting about an inch from its front surface, and being also about an inch apart. These pins do not run quite round, but an interval of about three inches and a half is formed at D, through which a pinion works, when traversing from the inside to the outside of the pins, and vice versa, during the reversing of the motion, instead of confining the pinion to one course, as when working the ordinary cog-wheel. Over the periphery of this wheel passes a flat chain, EE, crossing underneath and attached to the ends of the manglebox: F, is a winch handle used to communicate the motion, and G, a stout fly wheel, of about four feet in diameter, which assists and regulates the operation. The axle, upon the opposite extremities of which the wheel and handle are fixed, lies along a groove in the bridge above mentioned. Near the end of the axle, next the handle, is a pinion which works in a cog-wheel of six inches diameter, lying within a recess in the circular head of the near support; the last mentioned wheel turns on a short pivot, and has two holes in its face, into which is loosely inserted the forked end of an axle, 1, having at its further termination a pinion which acts upon the pegs of the wheel. There is a slit at K, through which the end of this axis passes, and which gives it a vertical motion sufficient to allow the pinion to pass up and down from one side of the circle of pegs to the other. Thus, when the machinery is put in motion by turning the handle, the pinion of the axle, 1, traverses the circle of pegs on the wheel, until coming to the gap at D, it turns round the last pin, sinks or rises in the slit, and thus reverses the motion of the wheel, and by means of the chain that of the box likewise: the handle and fly-wheel still turning in the same direction as before. This clever invention has received subsequent additions and improvements. The most interesting and useful of the deviations from Mr. Baker's plan is that of Mr. Elisha Peechey, who received a silver medal from the Society of Arts on account of it in 1823. The model of this mangle may still be seen in the Society's repository in the Adelphi. An endless rack is substituted for the peg wheel, and the flat chain is altogether abandoned. The annexed cut is an accurate representation of a complete mangle of this sort, as manufactured by Christie and Co., of Sheffield. With the exception of the bed, the underboards of the box, and the rollers, it is made entirely of cast and wrought iron. 'Fig. 1, will give the reader an idea of this improvement A, is a bridge of cast iron passing over the top AAA, is a frame of cast iron, with cross pieces and bridges, BB, to support the handle; c, the cast-iron box, filled with large stones and gravel to give it weight; D, the rack, which is made to move up and down at each end in projecting grooves or slit pieces, as represented at E, and attached to vertical plates, FF, rising from the box. This rack is a stout metal bar, with a row of pegs along the middle of one side; and R parallel with the line of these pegs projects a deep margin, intended to confine a pinion to its hold upon the pins while traversing the rack, or rather while moving the rack backwards and forwards by acting successively on each side of the series of pins. G, is the handle, and H, the fly-wheel, fixed on the opposite end of the axle, adjoining the centre of the fly-wheel, which, acting upon a circle of cogs, gives revolution to the pinion which carries the rack, and the upper part of which is seen in the figure; KK, are two iron prongs, either of which, on being turned down, lift and sustain the mangle-box when the rollers are to be taken out; LL, are the rollers upon which the linen is wrapped. up The manner in which the rack is balanced so as to produce a vertical and reciprocating motion through its whole length, cannot be gathered from the foregoing engraving; we therefore attempt to show by another cut how, in consequence of the rack being attached by each end to the connected levers, and counterpoised by the weights inside the mangle box, the pinion can traverse, Fig. 3 in the direction of the dots and arrows, the row of pegs along the middle. When the pinion, by the progression of the rack from right to left, passes round the endmost peg, the rack will be lifted up, the weights in the box will sink, and the course of the pinion will be along the under side of the rack, until on arriving at the last pin of the opposite end, the rack will again sink, the counterpoise rise to its present position, and the motion. of the box be thus reversed with every alternation of the rack. Mangling is performed in China in the most perfect manner, by a machine of the same kind as our mangle, but far simpler in its mode of operation. The figure at the head of this article will give an idea of the simplicity of the process. A concavity is formed in the floor of the apartment, and lined with hard polished wood. Upon this smooth surface is placed a roller, with the cloth intended to be mangled, rolled round it. A heavy stone of the shape above represented, and of sufficient width to rest on the floor at either side while the operator examines his work, is then slid upon the roller, and its elevations alternately depressed with his feet, so that the articles shall receive an equal pressure at every part. The man supports himself on the stone by holding a rod of bamboo, connected with supports of the same, driven into the floor at each side. The work executed by this means is said to be admirably finished, and not to take more than four or five minutes in the performance. Another very simple machine has been successfully applied to the mangling of linen, and is recommended to the notice of such as cannot afford to purchase the more complete and complicated mangles. It may be made with facility, and at a small cost, by any common workman, and has the advantage of being applicable to domestic use as a table, when it is not required as a mangle. The illustration (fig. 4) and description will perhaps make the method of construction clear to our readers. A roller about four inches in diameter and thirty inches long, has a piece of thick woollen cloth, used for ironing, firmly fixed thereon. The roller is turned round by means of a winch, and has its bearings at the ends in two stout iron plates, screwed to the sides of the table. Upon the roller rests a board of the length and width of the table, secured to it at one end by hinges, and which has at the other end Patents were taken out in 1823, by Mr. Snowdon, and in 1828, by Mr. Wilkinson, for erect or vertical mangles, by which it was intended to obviate an objection sometimes made to the common horizontal mangles, on account of the space they occupy. The erect mangles have not however met with extensive adoption. TO THE MOTHER OF AN INFANT WHILE you and yours are gathered, calmly gay, But trust not in the little Mary's smile; Yet the same verse that points parental fears Would cherish hope, and spare a parent's tears. 'Tis true, all human feelings far above Soars the quick fondness of a mother's love; And Time, that tames the wildest grief, is slow To quell the yearnings of a mother's woe, When lies in earth's dark bosom, cold and lone, The warm thing fed and fondled at her ownAnd truth, thus warning from this breast of mine, Alas! must find an echo deep in thineStill from this thought let consolation flow; To all who live, oh! what is life below? From youth to age, a thorny way we wendAh! happiest those who earliest find its end; And if thy child should find it early, weep No joyless tears where last she's laid asleep; Nor mourn, in yielding back to Him who gave, A seed of life up-springing from the grave.-J.S. B. BURIAL-PLACE OF THE CONVENT OF MOUNT SINAI. In the garden of the convent is the cemetery of the monks. Though not of a particularly melancholy humour, I am in a small way given to meditation among the tombs; and in many of the countries I have visited, the burial places of the dead have been the most interesting objects of examination. The superior had promised to show me the graves, and, now reminding the old man of his promise, he hurried off to get the key; for it appeared that the cemetery was not to be visited without his special permission. At the end of a long arbour of grape-vines, a narrow staircase cut in the rock, which I had not seen before, led down to an excavated square of about twenty feet; on the left of which was a small door, opening into a vault, where formerly the bodies of the dead monks were laid on an iron bedstead, and there suffered to remain till all the corruptible part was gone, and only the dry bones remained. Now they are buried for about three years or as long as may be necessary to effect the same object; and when the flesh has disappeared, the bones are deposited in the great cemetery, the door of which is directly opposite. Within the door is a small antechamber containing a divan and a portrait of some saint, who wandered eighteen years in the desert without meat or drink. From this the door opens into the cemetery, which was so different from any I had ever seen, that I started back on the threshold with surprise. Along the wall was an excavation about thirty feet in length, but of what depth I could not tell. It was inclosed by a fence which was three or four feet above the ground, and filled with human skulls: and in front, extending along the whole width of the chamber, was a pile of bones about twenty feet high, and running back I could not tell how far. They were very regularly displayed in layers, the feet and shoulders being placed outward alternately, and by the side of the last skeleton was a vacant place for the next that should be ready. I had seen thousands of Egyptian mummies, and the catacombs of Chioff, the holy city of Russia, where the bodies of the saints are laid in rows, in open coffins, clothed in their best apparel, and adorned with gold and jewels; and in that extraordinary burial-place I had seen, too, a range of small glasses in a dead stone wall, where wild and desperate fanatics had made their own tombs, with their own hands building themselves in an upright position against the walls, leaving a small hole open in front, by which to receive their bread and water; and when they died, the small opening was closed with a piece of glass, and the body of the saint was left thus buried. I had seen the catacombs of the Capuchin convent at Syracuse, where the bodies of the monks are dried and laid in open coffins, or fixed in niches in the walls, with their names labelled on their breasts; and in the vault of the convent at Palermo I had seen the bodies of nobles and ladies arranged upright along the walls, dressed as in life; the men with canes in their hands, and swords by their sides; and the noble ladies of Palermo lying in state, their withered bodies clothed in silks and satins, and adorned with gold and jewels; and I remember one among them, who, if then living, would have been but twenty, who two years before had shone in the bright constellation of Sicilian beauty, and, lovely as a light from heaven, had led the dance in the royal palace; I saw her in the same white dress which she had worn at the ball, complete even to the white slippers, the belt around her waist, and the jewelled mockery of a watch hanging at her side, as if she had not done with time for ever; her face was bare, the skin dry, black, and shrivelled, like burnt paper; the cheeks sunken; the rosy lips a piece of discoloured parchment; the teeth horribly projecting; the nose gone; a wreath of roses around her head; and a long tress of hair curling in each hollow eye. I had seen these things, and even these did not strike me so powerfully as the charnel-house at the convent of Mount Sinai. There was something peculiarly and terribly revolting in this promiscuous heaping together of mortal relics; bones upon bones; the old and young; wise men and fools; good men and bad; martyrs and murderers; masters aud servants; bold, daring, and ambitious men-men who would have "plucked bright honour from the moon," lying pell-mell with cowards and knaves. The superior told me that there were more than 30,000 skeletons in the cemetery -literally an army of dead men's bones. Besides the pile of skulls and bones, in a chamber adjoining were the bones of the archbishops, in open boxes with their names and ages labelled on them, and those of two sons of a king of Persia, who came hither on pilgrimage and died in the convent: their iron shirts, the only dress they wore on their long journey from their father's court, are in the same box. Other skeletons were lying about, some in baskets, some on shelves, and others tied together and haging from the roof. In one corner were the bones of St. Stephen-not the martyr who was stoned to death at Jerusalem-but some pious anchoret of later and less authentic canonization. As to the effect upon the mind of such burial-places as this, or the catacombs to which I have referred, I can say from my own experience that they destroy altogether the feeling of solemnity with which we look upon the grave.-STEPHENS's Incidents of Travel. THE BRANDY PEST. The Chief Magistrate makes a Speech. "THE principal thing was now done," continued Fridolin as he proceeded with the narration in which he was using the writings which he had brought with him. "In three weeks we succeeded in gaining to our Society twenty-nine fathers of families, besides seven unmarried young men. Doubtless the death of my father, and more especially the terrible end of old Mr. Thaly, had assisted in disposing their minds favourably to our undertaking. How could it be otherwise, when people had before their eyes the effects of brandy-drinking, in the ruin of a once respectable family, in the flight of the unhappy daughter, and in the impoverish ment of a house formerly wealthy? But even suppose this not to have been the case, still almost every one had more or less experienced in himself that good as well as bad brandy is an unwholesome drink. Every one knew of the fights, the maimings, and the disgraces which happened in drunkenness almost every week. Every one knew the families in which affairs were going wrong, because the husband usually came home of an evening excited with wine, having drunk and gambled away his earnings at the inn. "Now we determined on the first public meeting of the Society, which we eventually held in the great room of the Town-Hall. "Besides those invited by ourselves, many, more than a hundred, attended from the vicinity. The greatest number came out of curiosity, and perhaps many for the sake of getting a laugh at us afterwards. The chief magistrate had in the meanwhile taken, at our request, his seat as President, simplicity and power turned the laugh against many of the and addressed a discourse to the assembly, which, by its laughers. "He spoke as follows: 666 you 'Dear fellow-citizens! It is well known through the happy and contented families we have in the parish, I do erected his throne among us?-Upon the top of the brandy- 666 Brandy consists of water mixed with much spirit of wine. This spirit is poisonous. It burns in blue flames and occasions in those who drink it, the liver complaints, when we light it. It operates on the blood and the gall, under which such persons brandy contains the strongest poison hitherto known, the generally suffer. Cherryterrible prussic acid. A little drop of prussic acid placed on the tongue of a dog, kills it on the spot in convulsions. Certainly the prussic acid in the cherry-brandy is much diluted; but whoever drinks much of the brandy, must also swallow much of the poison. "But the evil does not stop here. The brandy-distiller and liquor-maker mix with their wares many deleterious drugs to make them more palatable to their customers: as many innkeepers, for the same reason, make their wines stronger with sulphur, and add injurious substances to them to improve them. With brandy are principally mixed alum and solution of lead, laurel leaves, pepper, bitter almonds, and some exciting or stupefying drugs. Therefore, the dstructive effects of spirituous liquors are not quite the same in all drinkers! One suffers from this, another from that evil. But the man is poisoned in all cases, even when he drinks moderately: how much more so when he is a regular dram-drinker! Such men in general do not become old. Among our people very few dram-drinkers are strong and healthy. Only ask about it in their houses. Only ask the doctors about it. There are many who drink, but do not become intoxicated. Habit enables them to do this. They boast of it. They think they can bear it. They are not held for especial drunkards, although they are such in reality. Their insides are eaten away, their liver and stomach are porous. They digest badly and very little. No wonder, for with some drinkers the stomach has been found not bigger than a fist; with others it has had holes eaten through. Whoever drinks brandy, and has its portion of poison once in his body, suffers much more under any disease that may befall him than he who does not drink it, if the disease does not carry him rapidly out of the world. "Dear fellow-citizens, you look astonished, but I speak on the authority of celebrated surgeons. You think I exaggerate. No, not in the least. Hitherto you have not reflected much on the bad effects of brandy; you must first have experienced them. This, however, you have not done. Our ancestors were unacquainted with this drink, and used it not. Even, at present, thousands live without it. These are healthy. And thousands live, who have sensibly enough freed themselves from the injuries which they were visibly suffering, and have entirely renounced brandy. They have become healthy, pious, and well-doing. "Brandy has become more common with us since the year of scarcity, because then wine and beer were too bad and too dear to be drunk. Since that time people have continued to drink spirits. But since that time also, poverty, and beggary, and licentiousness, have increased with us. A dram warms the stomach for a few minutes, excites the spirits for an hour, but leaves behind heavy limbs and headache; it weakens understanding, heart, and body. Brandydrinking workmen are in general bad workmen. I know these idle fellows from experience. Away with them! Whilst they drink and gamble their wages away in the inns, their wives and families live at home like dogs. When they go home there is fighting and quarrelling. See in the streets the pale, half-naked, vicious children. Why are they pale, half-naked, and vicious? Through the misconduct of their parents. Little boys with us, can drink brandy; they imitate the, old ones, who drink on all occasions, even at burials. Tas vice of drunkenness does not stand alone. It has for companions, gambling, lust, and many secret sins. "Will you believe me if I tell you, that in our parish the poorest families, receiving parochial relief, daily drink their brandy? but this neither satisfies their hunger, not quenches their thirst. Will you believe me that they become through it poorer and more unfit for work; that out of ten lunatics in the madhouse, out of ten thieves and other criminals in the prisons and houses of correction, out of ten diseased and ragged patients in the hospitals, certainly there are nine of them drinkers of brandy, and who through this drink have arrived at their present situation? Christians, who go to church, do you obey God, who forbids the crime of drunkenness? I believe that the poisonous devil of brandy is dear to many of you. You rather place the safety of your souls at hazard than leave this devil. **I see well that some of you think that it is not half so had. A glass of brandy, even if a little of it gets into our bead, does us no harm. It drowns grief and makes the heart Joyful. O yes! I will yet tell you still more; a little drop in our head makes one hour merry, but often fills a day, or A whole year, with anxiety and repentance; it makes an our rich, but then we squander our gold as if we had too much of it. What we buy in our intoxication appears doubled and more beautiful than it is, but when we get sober we see ourselves cheated and our purse empty. So wine and brandy are offered to the bidders at auctions, that they may see double, and think themselves rich. But how many men have got into poverty and debt through it! "However I will come to a conclusion. The misery and perverted state of life among us must be remedied. The governments and law-makers of countries hardly in any case trouble themselves about it. I know not whether they are wanting in will, or knowledge, or power. Therefore, we must and will help ourselves. A considerable number of respectable persons of our parish have united themselves into a Christian Society, like those of which many exist in other countries. These persons have resolved to refrain from drinking spirits themselves, and to influence their friends and acquaintances to do the same, as much as lies in their power, and to live as our ancestors did who now sleep in God. But only those friendly to a sober life can enter into this society, be they rich or poor. This Society is not political, not learned. It is an attempt of well-meaning families to restore religion, prosperity, and unity into our parish, and this through the means of partaking no more of distilled drinks, except in extraordinary cases. We hope that you and your families will gradually join us. And now that you have been shown what great mischief this sin brings, how heavy it is against yourselves, against your wives and children, and against your fellowmen, and what an offence it is against God, will you renounce it?-Hear the simple laws of our Society.' "With a loud voice the Chief Magistrate read the laws we had agreed on, which were immediately signed by thirtysix men, who had previously engaged to sign. "The laws were afterwards printed and distributed to every house, that all might become acquainted with them.” The Consequences of the Speech. "Our chairman was a powerful speaker. Although only a farmer, he was well instructed; he did not speak according to the rules of art, but from heart to heart, candidly and strikingly. Yet his speech, which had caused in the assembly sometimes laughter, sometimes gravity, did not produce the effects I had anticipated. Only three fathers of families, who had not before joined our Society, came forward and signed our laws. "But I was far more pleased, than by their accession, by a dirty ragged fellow, who approached slowly to the table of the chairman. He was known in the parish as a drunkard, and was often found lying intoxicated in a ditch or in the street. He desired to become a member of the Society, and begged the secretary to write his name in the book, as he could not write himself, and said, he would then make his cross at it. A general laugh rang through the whole assembly. When it had subsided, this man, who was known under the nickname of Fuddling Jack,' turned quietly to wards the public and said: Yes, yes; laugh as much as you like. A time will come when I shall laugh at you also. I was once a brave fellow, as industrious as any, but the dram-drinking made me a beast. I know it very well; it has cost my wife a thousand tears, and my children go naked and hungry. I have lost all my courage and pleasure in working, and am neither well nor ill; I am nothing but a miserable fellow, a burden to myself and others. I have many sins upon my conscience-may God forgive me and help me!-and may He also forgive those that induced me to drink brandy!' "At these words a great silence reigned in the assembly. Astonishment and doubts were read on all faces. I myself doubted the perseverance of this poor man in his good purpose. But he has indeed kept his word. He was admitted a member, and the assembly broke up. "Several little circumstances prevented people in the beginning from enrolling themselves in our Society. With some, the use of brandy had become a habit; they imagined it was indispensable for their health, and that it could do them no harm, because they never drank to excess. Others ridiculed our Temperance Society; they said, it would not last long, the zeal would pass away with the novelty. Others would have become members, but they were offended at not having been invited at first. Others, especially some of the more respectable, withdrew themselves haughtily; they thought one could live moderately, without belonging to a Temperance Society; one ought not to make a show of virtue, and boast of it. They maintained also, that they could not, for good manners' sake, avoid offering to their visitors and friends a glass of cherry-brandy, cognac, or other spirits, before and after supper. Others used other pretexts to get rid of the onerous duty to mankind of contributing to the abolition of drunkenness through their own |