^35a
VOL. HI.
OXFORD, N. C., WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 1877.
NO. 10.
THE EVE.
Sliould hatred or love
Our sympathies move,
>ris in vain for our lips to deny;
We may slip out a iib,
Though ever so glib,—
The truth is revealed by the eye.
When sweetly with smile
We seek to beguile,
All in vain the effort we try ;
Though the blush on the cheek
Tlie truth may not speak,—
’Tis read in the truth-telling eye.
If your .secret you keep
In your bosom so deep,
’Twill manage its prison to fly;
Beyond your control.
In spite of your soul,—
The truth will eseaire through the eye.
Then Never believe
That you can deceive,
And safely all se.archings defy;
Your tongue you may chain.
Your lips bite in vain,—
The truth will speak out from the eye.
UNCI.E Al.
THE CEETIVATION OF EIT-
EKAKV TASTE IN ClllEDKEN.
The literary taste of children
can be cultivated at a very early-
age. Children can learn to like the
good things in our literature, and
need not be confined to a mental
diet of “Motlier Goose.” Nothing
ever can take the place of “ Boy-
Blue” and “ Bo-peep.” But be
cause children like molasses candy,
are they never to have beefsteak
and bread ?
I know two little girls, aged
seven and four, who, quite un -
consciously, have made the ac
quaintance of some of the writings
of our best poet-, and find great
deligiit in tliem, and are learning
to ap|M'eciate good things in a
jierfectly natural, child-like way.
The oldest was a very nervous,
excitable child; it was almost
impossible to quiet her to sleep,
and she was very- wakeful at
night. Wlicn she was about
three y-ears old, her mother be
gan reading to her at bed-time
some of those pretty little pieces
of poetry for children—such as
are found in so many collections
like “ Hy-mns and Rhynnes for
Home and School,” “Our Baby”
and the like, and found the ihytlim
so soothing to the child’s restless
nerves, that she committed sev
eral to memory', to use when the
book was not at hand. She kept
the little book or newspaper-scrap
in her work-basket, and when
she was holding the baby or
could do nothing else, she learned
a stanza or two. She soon had
quite a collection at her tongue’s
end, and now it is part of the
bed-time routine for mamma to
repeat one or two. The little
rollicking four-year old, a perfect
embodiment of animal life and
spirits, generally calls for Tenny
son’s “ Sweet and low, wind of
the Western sea,” wliile the older
one is charmed by Mary Howitt’s
pretty ballad of “ Mabel on Mid
summer Eve,”—sweet, pure, good
English, all of it. I watched tlie
older child, as she stood at the
window beside her mother one
wild November morning, looking
at the dead leaves whiiling in the
wind, while the mother recited to
her Bryant’s lines, “ The melan
choly days are come.” It was
almost as good as the poem to
see the child’s gray eyes kindle
with appreciation as she eagerly
drank in the words. One can
see the influence of this culture
in the little songs tliev make up
for their dollies,—a jingle and
jardon, of course, but interspersed
with remembered lines from their
“ little verses,” and having withal
a good deal of rhythm and
movement about tliem. Their
ear has been educated to a certain
standard of appreciation,—just as
German children who grow up in
an atmosphere of good music find
delight in harmonies which are
hardly understood by our less
cultivated American ears. Of
course, you must carefully select
beforehand to suit the cliildreu’s
mind.s, and must explain similes
and allusions.
On the other hand, if children’s
minds are so susceptible to good
impressions, they are equally-
affected by bad ones. A child’s
world is made up of the things he
lias already learned; and these
things are conveyed to his mind
by what he has actually seen
liimself, or by pictures and stories
of what he has not seen. His
imagination is as quick to supply
“ missing links” as the most en
thusiastic Darwinian. What isn’t
there ought to be, so it’s all right.
Whether he lives in a world
peopled by distorted, horrible,
unnatural objects, or in one full
of all lovely and pleasant ones,
depends very largely- on the pic
tures be sees and the stories he
hears. If liis picture books are
of the hideous order, in which a
blue-bearded monster holds a
sword Gv-er an equally- horrible
pink-and-scarlet woman, you
must expect him to wake atniglit
from dreadful dremns, slirieking
with terror, and imagining gro
tesque figures leering at him from
every dark corner; and much
more so if lie is allowed to hear
ghost and hobgoblin stories told
by superstitious servant girls.
I feel almost like groaning,
when a y-oung mother sliows me
some marvel of embroidery- or
machine-stitching, say-ing trium
phantly, “There, I did every
stitch of tliat my-self!” When
will women learn that their time
is worth too much for better
things, to be spent upon such
trifles ? It is really pitiful to see
a good conscientious little mother
resolutely- shutting herself away
from so much that is best and
sweetest in her children’s lives,
for the sake of tucking their
dresses and ruffling their petti
coats. How surprised and grieved
slie will be to find that her hoy-s
and girls, at sixteen, regard
“ mother ” chiefly as a most ex
cellent person to keep shirts in
order and to make new dresses,
and not as one to wliom they
care to go for social companion
ship !
We should find ourselves
snatching . little bits of time to
look into encyclopedias and his
tories to see if our facts are cor
rect; brightening up rusty soliool-
knowledge ; perhaps even turning
into account our school-girl
accomplishments of drawing, and
music, and composition; and
certainly reading with some
thought for the children, which
of itself would supply the lack of
purpose so usual in women’s
reading. Tlie little we do is apt
to be desultory and unsatisfactory-,
a hodge-podge of popular novels
and the newspaper. We hare so
little time to read, we say, but
we let slip five and ten minute
chances, or waste them over some
frivolous story, because we
haven’t or tliink we haven’t any
object to stimulate us.
Hear what Gladstone say-s
about mail’s work, and make the
application to woman’s : “ To
comprehend a man’s life, it is
necessary- to know, not merely
what he does, but also what he
purposely leaves undone. There
is a limit to the work that can
be got out of a human body or a
human brain, and he is a wise
man who wastes no energy on
pursuits for which he is not fitted ;
and he is still wiser, who, from
among the things that he can do
well, chooses and resolutely
follows the best.” —Mary Blake,
in Scribner, for March.
OOOD FUFITS.
While Dorca.s lay a corpse in
an upper chamber, and the apos
tle Peter and the widow-friends of
the deceased stood round about,
the great jireacher present was
not called upon to deliver a
eulogy over the clay- of the dead
widow. There was sometliing
more appropriate than that—
they showed the coats and gar
ments wliich Dorcas liad made.
She had not made them for
herself, else there had been no
propriety in sliowlng them ; she
had made them for the poor,
and by so doing had become
their benefactor. The widows
who stood around the bed wept
when they thought of Dorcas,
and the garments she had made.
“She was full of good works and
aluisdeeds which she did.”
These coats and garments
were onlv- a part of what Dor
cas had done for the poor, and
were the stock which had accu
mulated and had not been dis
tributed. The scene must have
been an affecting one, and the
coats and garments were a better
eulogy on the deceased Dorcas
than any-thing that ever the
apostle himself could have said.
—Central Protestant.
SEA jnONSTERS.
Their Reality Discussed—Have
We a Sea-Serpent I
Mr. Ricliard A. Proctor writes
in the London Echo :
“The sea-serpent has long been
regarded by- most persons as
simpiy a gigantic fraud. Either
the object which appeared like a
sea-serpent was something alto-
getlier different—a floating tree
entangled in seaweed, the ser
pentine of distant hills half lost
under a scudding haze, a row
of leaping porpoises, or, if a sin
gle living creature at all, then
one of a known species seen
under unusual and deceptive con
ditions—or else the circumstantial
accounts which could not thus be
explained away were concoctions
of falsehood.
Monstrous cuttlefish were thought
to be monstrous lies, the Alecton,
in 1851, came upon one and
captured its tail, whose weight of
forty- pounds led naturalists to
estimate the entire weight of the
creature at 4,000 pound or nearly
a couple of tons. In 1873 again
two fishermen encounted a gigan
tic cuttle in Conception Bay,
Newfoundland, whose arms were
about thirty-five feet in length (the
fishermen cut off from one arm a
piece twenty-five feet long,)
while its body- was estimated at
sixty feet in length and five feet
in diameter—so that the devil
fish of Victor Hugo’s famous story
was a mere baby cuttle in com
parison with' the Newfoundland
monster. The mermaid, again,
has been satisfactorily identified
with the manatee, or, ‘woman-
fish,’ as the Portuguese call it,
which assumes, says Captain
Scoresby, ‘such positions that the
human appearance_ is very close
ly imitated.’
As for stories of sea-serpents,
naturalists have been far less dis
posed to be incredulous than the
general public. Dr. Andrew
Wilson, for instance, after speak
ing of the recorded observations
in much such terms as I have
used above, says: “We may-
then affirm safely- that there are
many verified pieces of evidence
on record of strange marine forms
having been met with; which
evidences, judged according to
ordinary and common sense rules,
go to prove that certain hitherto
undescribed marine organisms do
certainly exist in the sea depths.’
As to the support which natural
history can give to the above
proposition, “zoologists can but
admit,” he proceeds, “the correct
ness of the observation. Certain
organisms, and especially- those
of marine (e. g., certain whales,)
are known to be of exceedingly
rare occurrence. Our knowledge
of marine reptiles is confessedlv
very small; and, best of all, there
is no counter objection or feasi
ble argument which the naturali-
ists can offer by way of denying
the above proposition. He would
be forced to admit the existence
of purely- marine genera of snakes
which posess compressed tails,
adapted for swimming, and other
points of organization admittedly
suited for a purely aquatic exis
tence.
If theretore, we admit the pos
sibility—nay-, even the reasonable
probability—that gigantic mem
bers of the water-snakes may
occasionally- be developed, we
should state a powerful case for
the assumed, and probable
existenceof a natural ‘sea-serpent’
We confess we do not well see
how such a chain of probabilities
can be readily set aside,supported
as tliey are in the possibility of
their occurrence by zoological
science, and in the actual details
of the case, by evidence, as
trustworthy in many- case-s, as
that received in our courts of law.
When we remember how few
fish or other inhabitants of the
sea are ever seen compared with
the countless millions that exist,
that not one specimen of some
tribes will be seen for many
year.s in succession, and that some
tribes are only known to exist
because a single specimen, or
even a single skeleton, has been
obtained, we may well believe
that in the sea, as in heaven and
earth, there are more things, ‘than
are known in our philosophy.’ ”
How does man differ from the
brute creation ? He stands up
right; but he does not always act
so.
What a Sunsteoke did.—A
sunstroke gave this country one
of its greatest admirals. David
Porter,Jr., was once fishing on
Lake Pontchartrain, when he was
prostrated by a sunstroke. A
man named Earragut kindly
cared for him, and the son of
Porter, subsequently- known as
Comnidore David Porter, finding
that Earragut was in metderate
circumstances with several chil
dren to support, adopted David
Earragut when he was but se
ven years old, and obtained him
an appointment as midshipman,
and kept him with him until af
ter the capture of the sloop of war
Essex.
The scientific men tell us that
death by lightning, or by a
bullet that strikes through the
brain, is without pain. Prof.
Tyndall say-s that he once re
ceived a discharge ot a battery of
sixteen Ley-den jars of electricity,
and was senseless for a few
seconds, but suffered no pain
whatever. It there had been a
greater quantity of electricity, so
as to make the shock severe
enough to kill him, it would have
been all the same, and he would
have felt no pain whatever. The
reason is, that electricity travels
so much faster than sensation in
the nerves, that that electricity
reaches the centre of life and the
person is dead before he has
time to feel any pain.
The London World tells us,
editorially, that “the Empress
Eugenie continues to enjoy her
sojourn in EIjrence. Victor
Emanuel and she have exchanged
visits. She receives every day
at five o’clock in the Turkish
Room of the Villa Oppenheim,
and hither flock all the great Ital
ian dames and the most distin
guished of the foreign residents.
The conversation is alway-s gay
and animated about the chair of
the Empress, and she speaks of
the public matters of the day
with fine acumen, and without
any trace of bitterness: the old
grace and seduisance so celebrated
at the Tuileries have lost nothing
of their infinite fascination. When
will the brilliancy of Erance ever
again be represented by two such
women as the one whom Erance
doomed to death in the eighteenth
century and the one whom she
drove into exile in the nine
teenth ?”
A Golden Thought.—Nature
will be reported. All things are
engaged in writing their history.
The planet, the pebble, goes
attended by its shadow. The
rolling rock leaves its scratches
on the mountain, the river its
channels in soil, the animal its
bones in the stratum, fern
and leaf their rmodest epi
taphs incoal. The falling drop
makes its sculpture in the sand or
stone ; not a foot in the snow, or
along the ground, but prints in
characters more or less lasting a
map of its march ; every act of
the man inscribes itself in the
memory of his fellows, and in his
own face. The air is full of
sounds— the sky of tokens, the
ground is all memoranda and
signature, and every object is
covered over with hints, which
speak to the intelligence..