his coat tightly buttoned across his slender chest; his eyes seemed to glow like those His eyes raven's. glowed like of his own raven, and he kept us entranced his own for two hours and a half. The late Mr. Putnam, the publisher, told me that the next day the wayward, luckless poet presented himself to him with the manuscript of The Universe. He told Putnam that in it he solved the whole problem of life; that it would immortalize its publisher as well as its author; and, what was of less consequence, that it would bring to him the fortune which he had so long and so vainly been seeking. Mr. Putnam, while an admirer of genius, was also a cool, calculating man of business. As such, he could not see the matter in exactly the same light as the poet did, and the only result of the interview was that he lent Poe a shilling to take him home to Fordham, where he then resided." Readers of Dickens will remember DIGESTION. Georgiana Pocket a cousin of Miss —an Havisham's an indigestive single woman, who called her rigidity religion, and her liver love. It is Emerson, I believe, who speaks of brains paralyzed by stomach. He says also that he knew a witty phy The liver. A bright being appeared to Swedenborg. sician who found the creed in the biliary duct, and used to affirm that if there was disease in the liver, the man became a Calvinist, and if that organ was sound, he became a Unitarian. "Much wisdom in olives," said Sancho Panza. "Soup and fish," in the judgment of Sydney Smith, "explain half of the emotions of life." You remember the account Swedenborg has left us of his first vision: "I had eaten a hearty supper, perhaps too hearty and I was sitting alone in my chair, when a bright being suddenly appeared to me, and said, 'Swedenborg, why hast thou eaten too much?"" Voltaire was ashamed of his indigestion. He wrote to Madame de Bernières, "I am ashamed to present myself to my friends with a weak digestion and a downcast mind. I wish to give you only my beautiful days, and to suffer incognito." Rumford, it is said, proposed to Rumford's the elector of Bavaria a scheme for feeding his soldiers at a much cheaper rate than formerly. His plan was simply to compel them to masticate their food thoroughly. A small quantity, thus eaten, would, according to that famous projector, afford more sustenance than a large meal hastily devoured. "I do not know," remarks Ma scheme. caulay, "how Rumford's proposition was received; but to the mind, I believe, it will be found more nutritious to digest a page than to devour a volume." Montenegro has hardly any plains. The HEROIsm limestone ridges of the Dinaric Alps which traverse it, occasionally diversified by lofty peaks, are so rugged and rocky that the people have the common saying: "When God was in the act of distributing stones over the earth, the bag that held them burst, and let them all fall upon Montenegro." Death in battle is regarded by them as natural death, but death in bed as something apart from nature. The women, we are told, have the same passionate attachment with the men to family and country, and display much of the same valor. Gladstone has given two most remarkable examples, supplied by Goptchevitch. A Example sister and four brothers, the four of course all armed, are making a pilgrimage or excursion to a church. The state of war with the Turk being normal, we need not wonder when we learn that they are attacked unawares on their way, in a pass where they proceed in single file, by seven armed Turks; who announce themselves of valor. Odds fear. ful, but the fight proceeds. by shooting dead the first of the brothers, and dangerously wounding the second. The odds are fearful, but the fight proceeds. The wounded man leans against the rock, and though he receives another and fatal shot, kills two of the Turks before he dies. The sister presses forward, and grasps his rifle and his dagger. At last all are killed on both sides, excepting herself and a single Turk. She asks for mercy; and he promises it, but names her maidenly honor as the price. Indignant, and perceiving that now he is off his guard, she stabs him with the dagger. He tears it from her hand, they close, and she dashes the wretch over the precipice into the yawning depth below. The second instance is quite as remarkable. Tidings reach a Montenegrin wife that her husband has just been slain by a party under the command of a certain Turkish officer. Knowing the road by which they are traveling, she seizes a rifle, chooses her position, and shoots the officer dead. The rest of the party take to flight. The widow's The wife of the dead Turk sends the Monchallenge. Another remarkable example tenegrin widow an epistle. "Thou hast robbed me of both my eyes. Thou art a genuine daughter of Tscernagora. Come to-morrow alone to the border-line, and we will prove by trial which was the better wife." The Tscernagorine appeared, equipped with the arms of the dead Turkish officer, and alone, as she was invited. But the Turkish woman had thought prudence the better part of valor, and brought an armed champion with her, who charged her on horseback. She shot him dead as he advanced, and seizing her faithless antagonist, bound her and took her home, kept her as a nurse-maid for fourteen years, and then let her go back to her place and people. TER. It is a maxim, that character and destiny CHARACare the same thing. "Be what you were meant to be," said one of the Concord philosophers. "You may go through the world an oddity, to your own merriment at least, if not that of your contemporaries. Character is a fact, and that is much in a world of pretense and concession. Character, not accomplishments, but character personally controlling these, does the work. Manners carry the world for the moment, Manners for character for all times. Your real influence character the moment, for all is measured by your treatment of yourself. times. |