seventeen days," bearing important dis- | latest and most approved styles." Nor are patches from Washington. other physical requirements forgotten: supply of fresh beef is constantly on hand at the old stand of B. Stringham, a little south of the Council House;" and Charles White" is prepared to drive all kinds of stock to his herd ground at Black Rock twenty miles west of this city, on Monday in each week;" and shingles are served at 5 dollars 50 cents per thousand, when the timber is furnished, and 50 cents deducted when the timber is rolled on the logway, and the shingles removed by the owner as fast as they are manufactured."

Toiling like gnomes where the darkness is dreary, proaches are perfectly just; I condemn my

"Do you know what you have done ?"

"I do: I have punished myself." Then when no trace of the note remained, save a little light dust, the hero, for so we may call him, added firmly: "I solemnly vow that, whenever I lose my temper, I will inflict punishment on my love of money."

The promise was faithfully kept. From that time the avaricious man paid for the faults of the ill-tempered husband.

After every outbreak, he appeared before his own tribunal, and submitted to its selfimposed penalty. The condemned culprit then opened his casket, and, pale and trembling with suppressed agitation, took out a note and burned it. The expiation was always in proportion to the crime: there was a regular scale of penalties, varying, according to the nature of the offence, from 100 to 1000 francs.

A few of these chastisements had the happiest effect on both the defective phases of our hero's character. By degrees he became not only mild and good-tempered, but generous, and ready to dispense his treasures in ways which, if more agreeable to his friends, could not, however, be esteemed more useful to himself than the notes which he had bravely consigned to the flames.

NOTABILIA.

THE CONTRADICTORY COUPLE.

palm of her hand, "that in that house there are just fourteen doors, and no more." "Well, then," says the gentleman, rising in despair, and pacing the room with rapid strides "this is enough to destroy a man's intellect and drive him mad!" By and by the gentleman comes to a little, and reseats himself in his former chair. There is a long silence, and this time the lady begins. "I appeal to Mr. Jenkins, who sat next to me on the sofa, in the drawing-room, during tea." "Morgan, you surely mean," interrupts the gentleman. "I do not mean any thing of the kind," answered the lady. "Now, by all that is aggravating and impossible to bear," cries the gentleman, clenching his hands and looking upward in agony, "she is going to insist upon it that Morgan is Jenkins!" Do you take me for a perfect fool?" exclaims the lady. “Do you suppose I don't know the one from the other? Do you suppose I don't know that the man in the blue coat was Mr. Jenkins?" "Jenkins with a blue coat !" cries the gentleman, with a groan. "Jenkins in a blue coat !-a man who would suffer death rather than wear any thing but brown!" "Do you dare charge me with telling an untruth?" demands the lady, bursting into tears. "I charge you, ma'am," retorts the gentleman, starting up, "with being a monster of contradiction-a monster of aggravation-a-a -a-Jenkins in a blue coat! what have I done that I should be doomed to hear such statements ?"

RAILWAY VOCABULARY-SHUNTING!

The system of railway travelling, like every other new thing, has introduced a considerable number of new words into our vocabulary, the origin of which will, proba

"I Do believe," he says, taking his spoon out of his glass, and tossing it on the table, "that of all the obstinate, wrong-headed creatures that ever were born, you are the most so, Charlotte." Certainly, certainly, have your own way, pray. You see how much I contradicted you," rejoined the lady. "Of course you didn't contradict me at din-bly, puzzle the future lexicographer. Shuntner-time; oh no, not you!" says the gentleman. “Yes, I did," says the lady. "Oh you did!" cries the gentleman, "you admit that?" "If you call that contradiction, I do," the lady answers; "and I say again, Edward, that when I know you are wrong, I will contradict you. I am not your slave." "Not my slave!" repeats the gentleman, bitterly; "and you still mean to say that in Blackburn's new house there are no more than fourteen doors, including the winecellar?" "I mean to say," retorts the lady, beating time with her hair-brush on the

ing is one of such words. What can the most learned pundit make of that? What does it mean? You shall see. A Parliamentary train-which, like most other Parliamentary affairs-is the slowest on the road, stopped at a station the other day; the passengers were called on to keep their seats, which they did; and then the locomotive, after a fussing escape of steam, and a few loud snorts, commenced a backward movement. "What's the meaning of this?" shouted a passenger, out of a third-class window, to a porter walking alongside.

buildings, previously to this terrible visitation. When the rubbish was removed, and the land cleared, the disputes and entangled claims of those whose houses had been destroyed, both as to the position and extent of their property, promised not only interminable occupation to the courts of law, but made the far more serious evil of delaying the rebuilding of the city, until these disputes were settled, inevitable. Impelled by the necessity of coming to a more speedy settlement of their respective claims than could be hoped for from legal process, it was determined that the claims and interests of all persons concerned should be referred to the judgment and decision of two of the most experienced land-surveyors of that day

"We are getting you out of the way of the Express train, sir; she's just about due." And then there was a sudden joggle and a jolt, and passengers' heads were nearly meeting, as if to test each other's thickness. "Shameful conduct this," called out our passenger, becoming irritated; "what do you call this treatment, sirrah?" The porter again looked up: "Eh? What? Why, we call it shunting, sir; when the Express is due, we always shunt this train through the points into the siding, till she passes." "Shunt! What a confounded word! Where, in the name of Lexicons and Vocabularies, can they have got it? What do you mean by shunt, sir?" Porter: "Why, I mean, we are pushing the train out of the way, from off the down-line,—we are shoving it-men who had been thoroughly acquainted backwards." 'Shoving it—shunt. Oh! I see," observed the passenger, drawing in his head! Locomotives, brakes, and tenders are also words in frequent use among railwaymen. Locomotive is an entirely new word, and explains its own meaning. The brake is a contrivance for checking the impetus of a train, by the friction of wooden blocks against the wheels-a horrible nuisance to those seated in the carriages in which they are worked; these, however, were familiar to travellers by the old stage-coaches, when proceeding down-hill. Tenders-containing the tank with the supply of water for the engine-were formerly known of only as old ships waiting off harbor for the reception of pressed men. Then there is the railway buffer an extraordinary word, meaning the contrivance of springs and framing for preventing the effects of sudden concussion between the ends of railway carriages. You have also the chairs on which the rails are laid, and these chairs rest upon sleepers, whether upon the broad or narrow gauge. There are numerous other words used by the new railway class, of equal oddity to the above, though those mentioned are, perhaps, the most striking and the most frequently used.

BY HOOK OR BY CROOK."

The destruction caused by the great Fire of London, A. D. 1666, during which some 13,200 houses, &c., were burned down, in very many cases obliterated all the boundary-marks requisite to determine the extent of land, and even the very sites occupied by

with London previously to the fire; and, in order to escape from the numerous and vast evils which mere delay must occasion, that the decision of these two arbitrators should be final and binding. The surveyors appointed to determine the rights of the various claimants were Mr. Hook and Mr. Crook, who, by the justice of their decisions, gave general satisfaction to the interested parties, and by their speedy determination of the different claims, permitted the rebuilding of the city to proceed without the least delay. Hence arose the saying above quoted, usually applied to the extrication of persons or things from a difficulty. The above anecdote was told the other evening by an old citizen upwards of eighty, by no means of an imaginative temperament.

GENIUS HAS NO RULES.

It is impossible to make absolute laws for the mind. Ben Jonson wrote "Every Man in his Humor" at twenty-two, and Pau! Potter dropped his pencil before he was twenty-nine. Occasionally the life of the intellect seems to run itself out in one effort. All the pure juice of the vine flows into a single glass. Zurbaran's early picture divided with Raffaelle the applause of criticism in the Louvre. Akenside, at twenty-three, had a lustre of invention which each succeeding year seems to have diminished. Francia stood on the threshold of his fortieth year, when a picture by Perugino made him a painter. Dryden was nearly seventy when he completed his charming copies of Chaucer. Michael Angelo had very nearly

reached the years of Dryden when he gave | Third was painted at seventy-two, and his the "Last Judgment" to the world. The magnificent "Martyrdom of St. Lawrence" splendor of Titian shone most towards its at eighty-one.- Willmott's Pleasures, Obsetting his wonderful portrait of Paul the ❘jects, and Advantages of Literature.

:

CHRONICLE OF THE WEEK,

IN A BUNDLE OF GOSSIP.

leak out in the chance talk of the street; but there are intimations of a stone quay to be swept around an acre or two of water, which acres are to be filled up by a gradual dumping the city carts, until the ocean shall have become land.

For once, even gossip is at fault, and there| What the details of the plan are do not is not a scent upon this June grass, for even the oldest of the hunting dogs. A week ago, and as the thermometer stood at our writing table, we were counting on summer gauzes and plenty of fans, and fainting fits at that: but the manager of the weather has changed the programme, and we are shivering now under a shaggy dread-naught. Keen-witted philosophers who make fame in expounding the almanac, talk of unmelted icebergs, which have drifted down from the northern seas abreast of us, and which are tempering the winds, that would else be balmy, with the chillness of their cast-off vapors. It is as easy to be believed as most that the philosophers tell us, and we only wish that a cordial reception of the belief would warm us.

The portmanteaus which were being billeted for Newport and Saratoga have come again under the key and closet of the housekeeper, and bide their time in the wardrobe.

Among the amusements which are vouchsafed us meantime, in the city, may be reckoned foremost the newly projected Opera at Castle Garden. Critics say that the voices are good voices, and the orchestra fair; we know that the place is rich and the air sound. It is amusing, too, to find how the vast quantity of musical talk which for the six months past has been bottled in the name of Jenny Lind, is now decanted upon Bosio and Bettini. Conversation only needs a hinge, and it will open and shut like a door. What was closed yesterday is open to-day; and the current flows like wind.

Talking of Castle Garden reminds us that a new scheme for enlarging the Battery has latterly engrossed no small share of attention, and has even met with the approval of both branches of our august city congress.

The scheme seems to meet with occasional loud objections; more especially on the part of those commercial terrorists who foresee a change of channel consequent upon the new Battery, and the entire destruction of the present navigable privileges of New York. How well founded these objections may be, we-in common with the greater half of the city-have no accurate means of determining. If the plan is to furnish new Park room for our walking thousands,-where sick emigrants might breathe a little life into their wasted systems, and where the children of the poor may gambol over larger space, in the snuffing of the sea-breeze, we commend it for charity's sake. But if it is to be for a period of years, a foul receptacle of city offal, and an eye-sore to every native or stranger who rounds the light upon the jetty, we pray the mayor, and the council, to drop the bill and the Battery-in the water.

Another city project which has warmed the cool air of our adjournment of winter,-we have already alluded to, we mean the Park at the north of the town. This plan, too, strange though it may seem to all persons of civilized appetites, meets with vigorous opposition. A prominent daily journal contends that it is both needless and extravagant; and that it is a mere speculative fancy of landholders in that quarter of the city. It is very sad to think that the property of any man should be benefited by such a public charity; it is indeed unfortunate that the proposed Park is not surrounded by uninhabited regions; it