1 7. THE PARTIAL JUDGE. A farmer came to a neighboring lawyer, expressing great concern for an accident which, he said, had just happened. "One of your oxen," continued he, "has been gored by an unlucky bull of mine; and I should be glad to know how I am to make you reparation."- "Thou art a very honest fellow," replied the lawyer, "and wilt not think it unreasonable that I expect one of thy oxen in return." "It is no more than justice," quoth the farmer, "to be sure. But, what did I say?-1 mistake. It is your bull that has killed one of my oxen.' ""Indeed!" says the lawyer; "that alters the case: I must inquire into the affair; and if "And IF!" said the farmer"the business, I find, would have been concluded without an IF, had you been as ready to do justice to others as to exact it from them." Death, the king of terrors, was determined to choose a prime minister; and his pale courtiers, the ghastly train of diseases, were all summoned to attend, when each preferred his claim to the honor of this illustrious office. Fever urged the numbers he destroyed; cold Palsy set forth his pretensions by shaking all his limbs; and Dropsy, by his swelled, unwieldy carcass; Gout hobbled up, and alleged his great power in racking every joint; and Asthma's inability to speak was a strong though silent argument in favor of his claim. Stone and Colic pleaded their violence; Plague his rapid progress in destruction; and Consumption, though slow, insisted that he was sure. In the midst of this contention, the court was disturbed by the noise of music, dancing, feasting and revelry; when immediately entered a lady, with a confident air, and a flushed countenance, attended by a troop of cooks and bacchanals: her name was INTEMPERANCE.EL She waved her hand, and thus addressed the crowd of diseases: "Give way, ye sickly band of pretenders, nor dare to vie with my superior merits in the service of this great monarch. Am not I your parent? Do ye not derive the power of shortening human life almost wholly from me? Who, then, so fit as myself for this important office?" The grisly monarch grinned a smile of approbation, placed her at his right hand, and she immediately became his principal favorite and prime minister. EI 9.- DISHONESTY PUNISHED. An usurer, having lost a hundred dollars in a bag, promised a reward of ten dollars to the person who should restore it. The finder brought it to him, and demanded the reward. The usurer loath to give the reward, now that he had the bag, alleged, as soon as the bag was opened, that it contained, when he lost it, a hundred and ten dollars. Being called before the judge, he unwarily acknowledged that the seal was broken open in his own presence, and that the amount in the bag was but a hundred dollars. You say," said the judge "that the bag you lost had a hundred and ten dollars in it?"—"Yes, sir."- "Then," replied the judge, "this cannot be your bag, as it contained but a hundred dollars; therefore the plaintiff must keep it till the true owner appears; and you must look for your bag where you can find it." XIV. ADORATION AMID NATURAL SCENES. 1. THE turf shall be my fragrant shrine;" 2. My choirs shall be the moonlit waves, 3. I'll seek by day some glade unknown, 4. Thy heaven,30 on which 't is bliss to look, 5. I'll read thy anger in the rackEI That clouds a while the day-beam's track; Of sunny brightness breaking through! There's nothing bright, above, below, There's nothing dark, below, above, MOORE. 1. WHEN I the memory repeat of the heroic actions great, which, in contempt of pain and death, were done by men who drew their breath in ages past, I find no deed that can in fortitude exceed the noble boy, in Sparta bred, who in the temple ministered. 2. By the sacrifice he stands, the lighted incense in his hands; through the smoking censer's lid dropped a burning coal which 10% slid into his sleeve, and passed in between the folds, e'en to the skin. ΕΙ 3. Dire was the pain which then he proved, but not for this his sleeve he moved, or would the scorching ember shake out from the folds, lest it should make any confusion, or excite disturbance at the sacred rite; but close he kept the burning coal, till it eat itself a hole in his flesh. The standers-by saw no sign, and heard no cry. All this he did in noble scorn, and for he was a Spartan born. 4. Young student who this story readest, and with the same thy thoughts now feedest, thy weaker nerves might thee forbid to do the thing the Spartan did; thy feebler heart could not sustain such dire extremity of pain. But in this story thou mayest see what may useful prove to thee. By this example thou wilt find, that to the ingenuous mind shame can greater anguish bring than the body's suffering; that pain is not the worst of ills, not when it the body kills; that in fair religion's cause, for thy country, or the laws, when occasion dire shall offer, 't is reproachful not to suffer. MISS LAMB. 1. THE youth who resorts for amusement to hazardous practi cal jokes must be poorly off in resources of mirth. The most deplorable results have often followed the indulgence of this foolish propensity. Children have been seriously injured" for life, and sometimes killed, by attempts to frighten them by means of masks, white sheets, and other contrivances. A boy *This poem is printed as prose, that the pupil may exercise his own ea for harmony in supplying the metrical divisions. Let him first acquaint himself with what is said in paragraphs 156, 31 and 164, in respect to inver sion, the diæresis, the suspension of the voice at the end of lines, &c. once old his little sister, in sport, that the rag-man was coming to carry her off. Afterwards, when the rag-man really came, the child was so terrified that she sickened and died in conse quence. 94 2. An instance is related by Allston of a collegian who undertook to frighten his fellow-student" by appearing at midnight, dressed in white, in his sleeping-room. The victim of this stupid jest, roused from sleep, and seeing the white figure in his room, took a pistol from beneath his pillow, and threatened to fire. The figure did not move. The student fired, but, as the charge made no impression, he was so overcome with horror that he fell back a hopeless maniac. The practical joker had extracted the bails from the pistol before venturing upon his heartless experiment. 3. What numberless accidents have resulted from the levelling of fire-arms at persons, by practical jokers, young and old! The youth who, forewarned of the danger, still resorts to this practice, and who, to annoy or terrify another, aims at him a gun or pistol, should be treated as little better than one who wants but opportunity to become a murderer. It is not merely levity, but wickedness, to court such risks. ΕΙ 91 99 4. “There are many good-natured fellows," says the author of Lacon, “who have paid the forfeit of their lives to their love of bantering and raillery. No doubt they have had much diversion, but they have purchased it too dear. Although their wit and their brilliancy may have been often extolled, yet it has at last been extinguished forever, and by a foe, perhaps,' who had neither the one nor the other, but who found it. easier to point a sword than a repartee. EI 5. "I have heard of a man, in the province of Bengal," who had been a long time very successful in hunting the tiger; his skill gained him great éclat, and had insured him much diversion; at length he narrowly escaped with his life. He then relinquished the sport, with this observation: Tiger-hunting is very fine amusement, so long as we hunt the tiger; but it is rather awkward when the tiger takes it into his head to hunt us.' 98 6. "Again; this skill in small wit, like skill in small arms, is very apt to beget a confidence which may prove fatal in the end. We may either mistake the proper moment (for even cowards have their fighting days), or we may mistake the proper man. A certain Savoyard got his livelihood by exhibiting a monkey and a bear. He gained so much applause from his tricks with the monkey, that he was encouraged to practise some of them upon the bear; he was dreadfully lacerated, and, on being rescued with great difficulty from the gripe of Bruin, he exclaimed, What a fool was I not to distinguish between a ΕΙ monkey and a bear! A bear, my friends, is a very grave kind of a personage, and, as you plainly see, does not understand a joke!'" 7. The fate of Gonello, the jester, is memorable in the history of practical jokes. He was the son of a glover in Florence, and born between the years 1390 and 1400. Having been received into the service of Nic'olo the Third, Marquis of Ferra'ra, as a buffoon or jester, he became a great favorite. But at last the marquis falling ill of a quartan ague, the court physician recommended that his excellency should be suddenly submerged in cold water, without warning or preparation. 8. Poor Gonello generously undertook to carry out the prescription; and, one day, as the marquis was strolling along the bank of a river, Gonello ran up, and pushed him suddenly into the water. On being pulled out, the marquis was so enraged that he would listen to no explanation of the jester's conduct. Gonello fled from the city to Padua ; and the marquis issued an edict against him, proclaiming sentence of death "should he again set foot on Ferrara ground." ΕΙ 9. As Gonello soon heard, however, that the marquis (thanks to his ducking) was fast recovering his health and good humor,54 and as it was not a practical joke, but an act of humanity, that the jester had intended, he determined, in spite of the edict, to return to Ferrara. But, that he might go as much in character as possible, keeping within the letter of the law at the same time, he procured a cart filled with earth from Padua, and, standing upon it, entered Ferrara, protesting that the edict could not apply to him, as it was on "Ferrara ground" only that he was liable to be arrested, whereas he could prove that he stood on Paduan soil. 10. This special pleading did not, however, avail. He was hurried off to prison; the last rites of religion were administered to him; and the next day he was brought forth, in the presence of an immense assemblage, to the scaffold. Poor fellow! He thought it a very hard case that such a tragedy should succeed so much mirth as he had been the means of dispensing. Commending his soul to Heaven,30 he forgave all his enemies, laid his head upon the block, and told the executioner to do his work quickly. 11. With a grin upon his countenance, that functionary approached, made a flourish with his axe, and then dexterously slipping it out of sight, seized a pail of water, and emptied it on the bare throat of the prisoner. The assembled crowd burs into shouts of exultation and joy. But why does Gonell remain motionless, with his head on the block? Is he attempt |