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THE ALDERMAN'S FUNERAL.

BY ROBERT SOUTHEY.

Stranger. Whom are they ushering from the world, with all

This pageantry and long parade of death?

Townsman. A long parade, indeed, sir; and yet here!
You see but half; round yonder bend it reaches
A furlong farther, carriage behind carriage.

Stranger. Why judge you, then,
So harshly of the dead?

Townsman. For what he left

Undone,- for sins not one of which is mention'd
In the tenth commandments. He, I warrant him,
Believed no other gods than those of the creed.
Bowed to no idols-but his money-bags:
Swore no false oaths, except at the custom-house;
Kept the sabbath idle; built a monument

Stranger. It is but a mournful sight, and yet the To honour his dead father; did no murder;

pomp

Tempts me to stand a gazer.

Townsman. Yonder schoolboy,

Who plays the truant, says, the proclamation
Of peace was nothing to the show; and even
The chairing of the members at election
Would not have been a finer sight than this,
Only that red and green are prettier colours
Than all this mourning. There, sir, you behold
One of the red gown'd worthies of the city,
The envy and boast of our exchange,

Never pick'd pockets; never bore false witness;
And never, with that all-commanding wealth,
Coveted his neighbour's house, nor ox, nor ass.
Stranger. You knew him, then, it seems.
Townsman. As all men know

The virtues of your hundred-thousanders;
They never hide their lights beneath a bushel.
Stranger. Nay, nay, uncharitable sir' for often
Doth bounty like a streamlet flow unseen,
Fresh'ning and giving life along its source.

Ay, who was worth, last week, a good half million, Tomnsman. We track the streamlet by the brigher Screw'd down in yonder hearse.

Stranger. Then he was born Under a lucky planet, who to-day Puts mourning on for his inheritance.

Townsman. When first I heard his death, that

very wish

Leap'd to my lips; but now the closing scene
Of the comedy has waken'd wiser thoughts;
And I bless God, that when I go to the grave,
There will not be the weight of wealth like his
To sink me down.

Stranger. The camel and needle-
Is that, then, in your mind?

Townsman. Even so. The text

Is gospel wisdom. I would ride the camel-
Yea, leap him flying through the needle's eye,
As easily as such a pamper'd soul
Could pass the narrow gate.

Stranger. Your pardon, sir,

But sure this lack of Christian charity
Looks not like Christian truth.

Townsman. Your pardon, too, sir,

If with this text before me, I should feel

green

And livelier growth it gives; but as for this-
The rains of heaven engender'd nothing in it
But slime and foul corruption.

Stranger. Yet even these

Are reservoirs, whence public charity
Still keeps her channels full.

Townsman. Now, sir, you touch

Upon the point. This man of half a million
Had all these public virtues which you praise-
But the poor man rung never at his door;
And the old beggar, at the public gate,
Who, all the summer long, stands hat in hand,
He knew how vain it was to lift an eye
To that hard face. Yet he was always found
Among your ten, and twenty pound subscribers,
Your benefactors in the newspapers.
His alms were money put to interest
In the other world, donations to keep open
A running charity account with heaven;
Retaining fees against the last assizes,
When, for the trusted talents, strict account
Shall be required from all, and the old arch lawyer

In the preaching mood! But for these barren fig trees, Plead his own cause as plaintiff.

With all their flourish and their leafiness,
We have been told their destiny and use,
When the axe is laid unto the root, and they
Cumber the earth no longer.

Stranger. Was his wealth

Stored fraudfully, the spoils of orphans wronged,
And widows who had none to plead their right?
Townsman. All honest, open, honourable gains,
Fair legal interest, bonds and mortgages,
Ships to the east and west.

Stranger. I must needs

Believe you, sir; these are your witnesses,
These mourners here, who from their carriages
Gape at the gaping crowd. A good March wind
Were to be prayed for now, to lend their eyes
Some decent rheum. The very hireling mute
Bears not a face blanker of all emotion

Than the old servant of the family!

How can this man have lived, that thus his death
Cost not the soiling of one handkerchief!

Townsman. Who should lament for him, sir, in

whose heart

Love had no place, nor natural charity?
The parlour spaniel, when she heard his step,
Rose slowly from the hearth and stole aside
With creeping pace; she never raised her eyes
To woo kind word from him, nor laid her head
Upraised upon his knee, with fondling whine.
How could it be but thus ? Arithmetic
Was the sole science he was ever taught;
The multiplication table was his creed,

His paternoster and his decalogue.

When yet he was a boy, and should have breathed
The open air and sunshine of the fields,
"o give his blood its natural spring and play,
He in a close and dusty counting house,
Smoke-dried, and seared, and shrivelled up his heart.
So from the way in which he was train'd up,
His feet departed not; he toil'd and moil'd,
Poor muckworm! through his threscore years and ten;
And when the earth shall now be shovelled on him,
If that which served him for a soul were still
Within its husk, 'twould still be dirt to dirt.

Stranger. Yet your next newspaper will blazon him
For industry and honourable wealth
A bright example.

Townsman. Even half a million

Gets him no other praise. But come this way Some twelvemonths hence, and you will find his

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BY RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH.

A dewdrop falling on the wild sea wave,
Exclaimed in fear-I perish in this grave;"
But in a shell received, that drop of dew
Unto a pearl of marvellous beauty grew;
And, happy now, the grace did magnify
Which thrust it forth-as it had feared, to die ;-
Until again, I perish quite," it said,
Torn by rude diver from its ocean bed:
O unbelieving! so it came to gleam
Chief jewel in a monarch's diadem.

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A COMMISSION OF LUNACY.

to swathe me in wet sheets.

my presence, the lunatic.

Him, too, I drove from Yet these are the men

BY CHARLES F. BRIGGS

who come here to swear to my insanity. Ah, gen

I was once called to decide upon the case of a per-tlemen, I am not mad, but I wonder that I am not. son who was thought by his friends to be insane. The combined powers have taken away my Bessy He had been sent to a mad-house, and in one of his and my little boy, and I shall never, never, never see them more. Never." lucid intervals had demanded a trial of the county It was a perfectly clear case of lunacy, and a pitijudge, and a trial was granted. A jury of six men, able one. But when we retired to the jury-room, one of whom I was one, were to decide upon his case. He was a healthy looking gentleman, with nothing of the jurors would not agree with the other five. unusual in his appearance excepting a restlessness He stretched himself upon a bench, threw a handof his eyes, which might not have been observed had kerchief over his head, and requested us to wake him he not been accused of insanity. The proofs of his when we had come over to his way of thinking. madness were very clear, but he showed so much For myself, I was not disposed to be bullied out of coolness and clear thinking in his cross-questioning my opinion, so I too lay down upon a bench, deterof witnesses, that I felt some hesitation in pronounc-mined not to yield an inch of my right to think for ing him unsound of mind. His case was a very sad myself, and in a few minutes fell fast asleep; but I one, and he melted the hearts of all who heard him had better have kept awake, for the moment that my eyelids fell, I had to perform the part of a juror when he appealed to the jury. again.

It was the same ill-lighted room, the same dull Judge who slept through half the trial, the same clownish spectators, the same everything, except the defendant, who yet seemed to be the same person in a different habit.

"I deny that I am insane, gentlemen," he said, "but that when the Judge gave him leave to speak, is a matter of course. No man ever thought himself insane; neither can any man ever think himself so; for, having no standard of soundness but what exists in his own mind, he cannot be unsound to himself, He was a good looking youth; indeed, I have never though he may be manifestly so in the mind of anoseen a finer; his dark chesnut hair and sandy beard ther. But who shall determine what is madness and what is not? Be careful, gentlemen, how you were equal to a patent of nobility, for they proclaimpronounce me mad, lest to-morrow I be called to pro-ed his Saxon blood, and proved him of a race that came upon the earth to conquer it. His eyes were nounce you so. The proofs that have been offered to But, poor man! he you of my madness, are to me proofs of entire sound-gray and his complexion fair. was out of his mind. His father was a merchant, ness of mind. I would be mad were I anything dif ferent from what I have been represented. They and he wept while he gave evidence to his son's inhave brought three physicians, who all say that I sanity. He, the son, would wear his beard, and this am mad. Yet I will compel you to admit that the was the proof of his madness. In spite of the jeers, madness is in them and not in me. I was sick, very the sneers, and the laughter of the world, he would siek, sick at heart, for you must know that I had lost let his beard grow as nature intended. Poor fellow! So intelligent, so gentle in his my Bessy and my little boy-my little boy." Here We all pitied him. the unfortunate hesitated and seemed to lose him- manners, so happily circumstanced, and yet mad! He had the hardihood to declare in open court, that self entirely. "I said that I was sick, but it was But it must have been me. Bessy. Yes, I was he saw no reason why he should deprive his face of sick, very sick, sick at heart, for my little boy and the covering which God had put upon it. Bessy. Bessy again. Yes, Bessy had been sick, but now it was I. I was sick, and they brought me a He felt my pulse, he looked upon me physician. with his cold gray eyes, and then reached me a tumbler half full of a nauseous liquid, which he said would quiet me, and do me good. But all the while I was quieter than a rock, and colder, and harder. I thought that he needed the stuff more than myself, so I caught his head between my knees, and though he struggled hard, yet I poured it down his throat, gentlemen, and he was glad enough to escape. Then they brought another to me, who gave me a little globule of sugar, a pin's head was a cannon ball beside it, and told me that it would cure my fever. Do you blame me for thrusting the madman out of my chamber? Then they brought me another, who would give me no medicine at all, but ordered them

"No reason," cried his mother, "O, my son, does not your father shave, your uncle, your brother, all the world shave but yourself? No reason for shaving? O! my son!"

"True," replied the unfortunate youth, as he stroked his beard with ineffable content, «true, but I need my they are all mad or they would not. beard to protect my face and throat from the wet and cold. It helps to hide the sharp angles of my jaws, it makes me more comely, adds to my strength, and keeps me in health. Do I not look more like a man than my father, with his smooth, pale face, who has nothing but his clothes to distinguish him from a Look at him; he has scraped all the hair woman? off his chin, and placed another man's hair on his head. Beautiful consistency. To shave his chin and put What a mad outrage upon false hair on his head!

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nature. Hair is not always necessary to the head, I me to this dreadful alternative," said the old man for it often falls off as we grow old, but it never after he had been sworn. My poor son has been drops from the chin. I appeal to this honorable afflicted with his disorder for two years. We have court-" tried all gentle means to cure him, but he grows "Silence!" cried the honorable court, who at that worse and worse. The proofs of his madness are so moment woke up. glaring that he cannot be kept from the mad-house.

"Justice never sleeps, excepting on the bench," He is now in his twenty-fifth year; he has had a good observed the youth, in a low voice.

"Go on," said the honorable court, whose business, when out of court, was horse dealing, which fitted him in an eminent degree for the responsibilities of his office.

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I appeal to this honorable court," continued the insane youth, "I appeal to you, gentlemen of the jury, and I would, if I were permitted, appeal to these fair ladies (there were several old gossips in the room) to say whether I am not more sane than my father."

"I can't allow such audacious remarks as those in this place," said the honorable court, rising and wiping its honorable face with a dingy handkerchief. "This thing mus'n't proceed no further. I don't know, gentlemen of the jury, as I have ever been more seriously affected in my life, than I have been by this melancholy trial."

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Probably not," said the maniac.

"The court will allow no interruption from no one," said the honorable court, fixing its dreadfully stern eyes on the madman, and stretching out its stumpy fore-finger in a threatening manner. "My heart has been melted by the scene we have witnessed."

education, the best that money could procure; he has made the tour of Europe; he has had all the advantages which my extensive business connections could give him, and yet, gentlemen, regardless of my wishes, and his own welfare, he has married a poor young woman, and gone to bury his splendid accomplishments on a farm. Is it not dreadful, gentlemen, to witness such a sacrifice? I offered him a share in my business, I proposed to establish him in a splendid distillery, but such was the poor creature's derangement of intellect that even this brilliant offer conld not draw him from the obscurity of the country. Look at his dress, gentlemen; if the court please, is not that prima facie evidence of his insanity?"

The court thought it was, but would not give a decided opinion without first looking into somebody's reports.

"Look at him, gentlemen, would anybody believe that he was the son of a rich merchant? That disgraceful blouse, like a common laborer's. That coarse straw hat! O, gentlemen, pardon a father's weakness! I can say no more.'

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The mother of the insane man appeared next, but her distress was too great to admit of her giving "A very little heat will melt ice," said the mad her evidence in a straight forward manner. youth.

My feelings is too much for me to proceed," continued the honorable court, "I resign the case into your hands, gentlemen of the jury, only remarking that the young man is mad, and so you must give in your werdick."

She believed her son to be crazy. Had first suspected it on his return from Paris, on account of his plain clothes; he had left off coffee and tea, and drank nothing but cold water; he talked strangely about the country; quite unlike her other children, who were fond of style, and lived respectably; insan

her husband; had seen her son laugh with the coachman; had opposed his marriage; thought it a decided proof of insanity to marry out of one's own circle; had been the first to propose sending her son to the insane retreat.

After the witnesses delivered their testimony, the court told the maniac that he might address the jury.

The poor youth was immediately put into a strait-ity not peculiar to the family; was not influenced by jacket and dragged away, yet he still seemed to stand at the bar, but his appearance was changed. He wore a broad-brimmed hat made of oaten straw, a linen blouse which reached below his knees, and a shirt of snowy whiteness open at the throat, so that his manly neck was fully exposed. His complexion was brown, his eye clear and bright, his laughing mouth displayed teeth of a pearly lustre, and he appeared to receive great pleasure in snuffing the fragrance of a bunch of field flowers which he held in his hand. I thought, as I looked at him, that I had never seen a youth who bore so many marks of unequivocal soundness of mind and body. But he was mad, notwithstanding all. His own father was the first witness examined. Poor old man! he could hardly articulate the words which a sense of duty to his child compelled him to utter.

"I have nothing to say in regard to the testimony," said the youth "but that it is all true. I prefer the sweets of a country life to the bitter toils of business. I have a wife whom I love; she brought me no fortune, it is true, but she helps me daily to earn one. I have a little farm which yields more than I need; I have good health, a quiet conscience, and two lovely children whose minds and bodies I am striving to rear in conformity with the dictates of nature. For these I prefer a moderate fortune in Be

"Nothing but a hope that judicious medical treat- the country to an immoderate one in the city. ment may restore my son to his senses, could induce I sides I look upon the judgment pronounced upon

Adam in the light of a command, and I was never happy until the sweat of my own brow seasoned my daily food."

The jury pronounced him mad without leaving their seats.

"A righteous werdick!" said the honorable court. He was led from the court room, and yet he still stood there, such are the inconsistencies of dreams.

He was now dressed in rusty clothes; his countenance was subdued by thought; he was unhappy but not uneasy; his eyes were cast down, his lips were more closely pressed together, and the vigorous look of youth was changed for a gravity of demeanor that sat upon him well, though it seemed too grave for his years. There was literally a cloud of witnesses to his insanity. He had been heard to pity a condemned felon; he had said irreverent things of the law; he had spoken against the clergy; he had abused physic; he had given his money to vagabonds; he laughed at the fashions; he had cried at a wedding; he was opposed to war; he had been struck without returning the blow; he had pitied a slaveholder; he had. But the jury would hear no more. They pronounced him mad with one voice. All Bedlam seemed now broken loose. No sooner was one maniac pronounced upon than another occu pied the stand. The obscure little court-room began to look like the ante-room of the revolutionary tribunal. To expedite business a whole lot of maniacs were put up together and judged in a lump.

One was a young girl of eighteen who had married her father's poor clerk whom she loved, when she might have married her father's rich partner whose money her friends loved; a Wall-street broker who had refused usury on a note; a grocer who had recommended a customer not to buy his sugar because he could buy cheaper elsewhere; a man who corrected a post office error when his letter had been undercharged; a political orator who had refused an office because he did not think himself entitled to one; a lawyer who refused to advocate the cause of a rogue on the pretence of conscientious scruples; a critic who doubted his own infallibility; a lieutenant of marines who gave up his commission and earned his bread by his own labor; an editor of a newspaper who had never called names; an English traveller without national prejudices; a midshipman who never damned the service; an artist who painted from nature; an author who was satisfied with a review of his book; a young lady who was offended at being told that she was pretty; a poet who considered himself inferior to Shakspeare. These were all pronounced mad. But the noise of their removal woke me, and finding that the other jurors had gone over to the one who was for rendering a vedict of not insane, I too, instructed by my dream, concluded to coincide with them, lest I should establish a precedent by which I might at some future day be pronounced mad myself.

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