THINGS AND THOUGHTS,
FOUND HERE AND THERE.
LAST Paoor or REGARD.—One of the Joand tribes, the Bintlerwars who inhabit the hills of Oomacemtu, near the source of the Nerbuddah river, is described as a race of cannibals. This race lives in detached parties, and have seldom more than eight or ten huts in one place. They are cannibals in the real sense of the word, but never cat the flesh of any person not belonging to their own family or tribe, nor do they do this except on particular occasions. It is the custom of this singular people to cut the throat of any person of their family who is attacked by severe illness, and who they think has no chance of recovering ; when they collect the whole of their relations and particular friends, and feast upon the body. In like manner, when a person arrives at a great age, and becomes feeble and weak, the Khulal Khor operates upon him ; when the different members of the family assemble for the same purpose as above stated. In other respects, this is a simple race of people, nor do they con- sider cutting the throats of their sick relations or aged parents any sin; but, on the contrary, an act acceptable to Kali, a mercy to their relations, and a bless- ing to the whole race.—Coleman's Mythology of the Hindoos. [Mirabeau was of the same opinion as to the humanity of terminating suffer- ing by death in his own case. " I shall suffer," he would mildly say, " so long as you have theleast hopes of my cure; but if you have no longer any, have the humanity to put an end to my sufferings, of which you can form no idea." The human mind seems the most pliable thing in the world : these people eat their relatives with gusto, but have been taught to make as great a distinction in the shades of cannibalism, as other countries and people between virtues and vices. It would be mighty difficult to make them believe the difference be- tween the flesh of one man and another was a prejudice. We are surrounded with a certain moral atmosphere, out of which it is necessary to get, in order to see what is prejudice and what is not.] YANKEE PATOIS.—The navigation of the Ohio and the Mississippi is often rendered dangerous by the trunks of trees, or snags, as they are called, which, in floating down the stream, get entangled and stick fast in the mud at the bot- tom;presenting a most formidable, and frequently unseen point near the sur- face of the water. Our steamer ran upon one of them, but was soon got off again by means of a long spar of wood, that was dropped into the water, and then used as a lever, with the side of the boat for a fulcrum by means of a rope wound about the capstan and fastened to the top of the spar. In the midst of the confusion, an American stepped up to me, and said, " Stranger, I guess we're in a bad fix !" To be in a good or a bad fix, is an expression very com- monly made use of in cases of dilemma. Speaking of a man placed in the stocks, for instance, a common American would remark, that he was in a " bad fix." without the least fear of committing a pun, even at Philadelphia, where the disease is very prevalent. The American error is detected in the formal and decided accentuation of particular syllables in several common words, and in the laughable misuse of many others; and not in any mispronunciation of the lan- guage generally. The word engine, for instance, is pronounced Engine • fa- vourite, favourite ; European, European, &c. A patois, or provincial dialect, such as is heard in the more distant counties in England, is unknown amongst the natives of the United States; and the similarity of language to be heard in every part of the Union that I visited, could not but attract my attention as an Englishman. To travel by the mail, for two or three hundred miles, and to sit beside a coachman who spoke as good English as the one with whom I first started, had certainly, at least I thought so, the effect of shortening the distance. — Vigne's Six Months in America.
SINGULAR MARKS OF FRIENDSHIP.—Mirabeau had a valet-de-clambre whose name was Teutch. Teutch's personal services lasted a long time; for Mirabeau was very richerche in his toilet; and, moreover, sometimes amused himself with kicking and thUmpisg Teutch, who considered these ioughcaresses as marks of friendship. When, from occupation or some other cause, several days had elapsed without any such tokens being given, poor Teutch was very sad, and his service seemed to weigh heavily upon him. What is the matter,. Teutch?" said his master one day, " you look very melancholy."—" Monsieur he Comte neglects me quite."—" How ! what do you mean ?" said 11,farabeau.. "Monsieur le Comte has not taken any notice of me for this week past." 'Thus it was really a necessary act of humanity, to give him now and then a good blow in the stomach; and if he were knocked down, he laughed heartily, and was quite delighted.-Dumont* Mirabeau. THE PHILOSOPHY OF OLD MAID/SM.-If any share of independence is the lot of woman, it falls to the wealthy old maid. The policy of man has made old-maidism the bugbear of the sex. They have judiciously levelled against it the whole artillery of ridicule, the squibs and crackers of which are vastly more feared than the two-edged sword of satire ; the first hurts a woman's fine vani- ties-it falls upon her flounces and furbelows ; the latter only cuts her vices ; mad though the wound it makes be sore, it is probably unseen, and she heals it, and says nothing about it.- Woman's Love. UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE IN AFRICA.-I/ Will scarcely be believed, that not less than one hundred and sixty governors of towns and villages betweeen this place and the sea coast, all belonging to Yarriba, have died from natural causes, or have been slain in war, since I was last here (a period of three years); and that, of the inhabited places through which we have passed, not more than half a dozen chiefs are alive at this moment, who received and entertained me on my return to Badagry three years ago. -Lander's Niger.
DUEL BETWEEN SAM AND THE SALMON.-I remember, when a boy, carry- ing the splits for a servant of the family, called Sam Wham. Now Sam was an able young fellow, well boned and willing ; a hard-headed cudgel-player, and a marvellous tough wrestler, for he had a back bone like a sea-serpent; this gained him the name of the Twister and Twiner. He had got into the river, and with his back to use was stooping over a broad stone, when something bolted from Ender the bank on which I stood, right through his legs. Sam fell with a great splash upon his face, but in falling jammed whatever it was against the stone. 4' Let go, Twister," shouted I, " 'tis an otter, he will nip a finger off you." 4' 'Whist," sputtered he, as he slid his hand under the water' " may I never
e.
read a teet again, if he isua a sawmont wi' a shouther like a hog!" " Grip him by the gills, Twister," cried I. " Saul will I!" cried the Twiner; but just then there was a heave, a roll, a splash, a slap like a pistol-shot ; down went Sam, and up went the salmon, spun like a shilling at pitch and toss, six feet into the air. I leaped in just as he came to the water ; but my foot caught between two stones, and the more I pulled the firmer it stuck. The fish fell in a spot shallower than that from which he had leaped. Sam saw the chance, and tackled to again; while I, sitting down in the stream as best I might, held up my torch, and cried, " fair play, as, shoulder to shoulder, throughout and about, up and down, roll and tumble, to it they went, Sam and the Salmon. The Twister was never so twined before. Yet through crossbuttocks and cap- sizes innumerable, he still held on - now haled through a pool ; now hailing up a bank ; now heels over head; now head over heels ; now head and heels together; doubled up in a corner; but at last stretched finely on his back, and foaming for rage and disappointment ; while the victorious salmon, slapping the stones with his tail, and whirling the spray from his shoulders at every roll, came boring and snoring up the ford. I tugged and strained to no purpose ; he flushed by me with a snort, and slid into the deep -water. Sam now staggered forward with battered bones and peeled elbows, blowing like a grampus, and cursing like nothing but himself. He extricated Die, and we limped home. Neither rose for a week; for I had a dislocated ankle, and the Twister was troubled with a broken rib. Poor Sam! he had his brains discovered at last by a poker in a row, and was worm's meat within three mouths; yet, ere he died, he had the satisfaction of feasting on his old antago- nist, who was man's meat next morning. They caught him in a net. Sam knew him by the twist in his tail.-Blackwood's Magazine for April.
TIIE USEFUL VERB " To Fix."-There are about half a dozen words in con- stant use, to which an English ear is unaccustomed, in the sense they are meant to convey, such as-" to fix, to locate, to guess, to' expect, to calkilate," &c. The verb " to fix," has perhaps as many significations as any word in the Chinese language. If any thing is to be done, made, mixed, mendild, bespoken, hired, ordered, arranged, procured, finished, lent, or given, it would very pro- bably be designated by the verb " to fix." The tailor or bootmaker who is re- ceiving your instructions, the barkeeper who is concocting for you a glass of mint- julep, promise alike to fix you, that is, to hit your taste exactly. A lady's hair as sometimes said to be fixed, instead of dressed ; and were I to give my coat or any boots to a servant to be brushed, and to tell him merely " to fix" them for me, he would perfectly understand what he had to do. There is a marked peculiarity in the word " clever." In America, a man or
'woman may be very clever without possessing one grain of talent. The epithet is applied almost exclusively to a person of an amiable and obliging disposition.
Mr. A. is a man of no talent ! no! but then he is a very clever man ! Accord- ing to their meaning, Bonaparte was terribly stupid, and Lord North was a very clever fellow indeed.- Vigne's Six Months in America.
THE WOMAN PLANT; AN EXOTIC.-A change to coldness and distance, in one with whom we have been in habits of friendly intercourse, to whom the mind has insensibly become accustomed, on whom it Las formed a sort of de- pendence, to whom the heart has at last leaned in kindly, though scarcely con- scious, confidence, and opened with habitual communicativeness and sympathy, -a change from all this to reserve and avoidance, is a change in which the soul shivers.- Woman's Love.
I was one day feeding the poor elephant (who was so barbarously put to death at Exeter Change) with potatoes, which he took out of my hand. One of them, a round one, fell on the floor, just out of the reach of his proboscis. He leaned against his wooden bar, put out his trunk, and could just touch the potato, but could not pick it up. After several ineffectual efforts, he at last blew the potato against the opposite wall with sufficient force to make it rebound ; and he then, without difficulty, secured it.--Jesse's Gleanings.
THE BRAZEN EGG OF THE JAPANESE.-The Japanese, like the Hindoos, in one of their hypotheses of the creation, believe that the world was once enclosed in an immense egg, the shell of which was brass. In this egg, the world floated on the surface of the waters, till the moon, by her piercing light, drew up mat- ter from the bottom of them, which became earth and stone, upon which the brazen egg reposed. The bull finding it, butted against and broke it, and the -world came forth. The animal, being heated with such hard labour, blowed very much, and his breath entered into a calabash called pou, which became a man, and is termed pourang. I find in another place a slight variation in this story of the golden bull and brazen egg, in which a japanese Eve is made the origin of all the mischief that has since occurred in the world. It would, in this case, appear, that in the egg were enclosed the four elements, and the four principal colours-red, yellow, blue, and green. These being well shaken together, produced the world. Man, however, was wanting; but woman, naturally enough, undertook to remedy the defect. It seems that one of her lovely sex was discovered one day, growing in the shell of a calabash, but she had unhappily no soul; on which account God pitied her, and sent a bull to the calabash, which breathed into it the breath of his nostrils, and, by that means, gave her a soul-and a most wicked one it un- fortunately tierned out to be; for, no sooner had she issued from her shell, than she became mote intimate, with the inferior deities than our modern ideas of propriety can at all apprmre of. A wicked and irreligious race of men was in consequence produced: so that God determined to destroy the world, mix up the elements and colours again' into a chaotic mass, and of it form a round globe. -Caiman's Mythology f the' Rind("8*
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