UNIVERSITY COURIER.
5
In the same theatre was a lean, lantern-jawed cockney, who, in despair of ever getting a syllable to utter, determined one night to attract the attention of the audience, and crown himself with glory by indulging in some by-play of his own brilliant invention. The piece happened to be "Metamora," with the gentle and lamb-like Forrest as the "big Injun." Our cockney was one of the (speechless) Indian tribe, and got himself up bravely in red paint, feathers, leggings, tunic, moccasins, and a tomahawk. In one of the great tragedian's addresses to the red man, this supe pretended to consider himself as the one red man especially appealed to, and bursting into a shrill war-whoop, in the middle of Forrest's soliloque, he rushed down to the right hand corner of the stage, and wildly brandishing his tomahawk over his head, he indulged in a frantic war dance that set the audience screaming with laughter; but his triumph was of brief duration, for, breathless with astonishment and panting with rage, Forrest instantly prepared for action. With one mighty bound he cleared the intervening space between the center of the stage and the corner, and grasped the affrighted supe by the throat, forgetting in his tremendous passion the character he was impersonating and his surroundings. He shook the man till he shook him on to his marrow bones, and then roared out:
"You fool, what are you doing here?"
"Mr. Forrest—I—" stammered the half-strangled supe, "I —I was honly hacting a bit, sir."
No longer of the rank and file, that ambitious actor has been for many years past the captain of the supers at the___
theatre. He abounds in reminiscences, usually beginning:
"When me an' Forrest was hacting 'Amlet, at the ole — ."
—Celia Logan.
GIFTS OF THE GODS TO MAN.
They gave him light in his way,
And love, and a space for delight,
And beauty, and length of days,
And night, and sleep in the night.
His speech is a burning fire;
With his lips he travailleth;
In his heart is a blind desire,
In his eyes foreknowledge of death;
He weaves, and is clothed with derision;
Sows, and he shall not reap;
His life is a watch, or a vision,
Between a sleep and a sleep.
—Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon
EDUCATION FOR THE KITCHEN.
The friends of genuine social improvement may congratulate themselves that the progress of education is beginning to take effect upon this important department of domestic life. Cooking schools are springing up in many places in this country and England, and the English are taking the lead in organizing them as a part of their national and common school system.
Of the importance, the imperative necessity of this movement, there can not be the slightest question. Our kitchens, as is perfectly notorious, are the fortified intrenchments of ignorance, prejudice, irrational habits, rule-of-thumb and mental vacuity, and the consequence is that the Americans are liable to the reproach of suffering beyond any other people from wasteful, unpalatable, unhealthful and monotonous cookery. Considering our resources and the vaunted education and intelligence of American women, this reproach is just. Our kitchens are, in fact, almost abandoned to the control of low Irish, stupid Negroes, and raw, servile menials, that pour in upon us from various foreign countries. And what is worse, there is a general acquiescence in this state of things, as if it were something fated, and relief from it hopeless and impossible. We profess to believe in the potency of education, and are applying it to all other interests and industries, except only that fundamental art of the preparation and use of food to sustain life, which involves more of economy, enjoyment, health, spirits and the power of effective labor, than any other subject that is formally studied in the schools. We abound in female colleges and high schools, and
normal institutes supported by burdensome taxes, in which everything under heaven is studied except that practical art which is a daily and vital necessity in every household in the land.Prof. Youmans,in Popular Science Monthly.
THE SEA ISLANDS.
Nowhere on the face of the earth is there such a collection of islands as that which is strung along the coast of the United States from Key West to Charleston. The archipelago of the China sea or the Bahamas possibly includes as large a number, but they are scattered over a much larger space. The Sea islands are all flat, never over ninety feet high, and are composed of a sandy alluvium in some cases, in others of a soil formed of coral abraded to dust, while others, again, combine both formations. They are often divided from each other, or from the adjoining main-land, only by winding, but deep, creeks through which the tide flows. These channels are sometimes so narrow and overgrown with long sighing sedge that one is hardly conscious that the banks represent distinct islands separated by the waters of the ocean. But, although their formation would seem adapted to render these islands monotonous and uninteresting, they are really full of attraction, for they are often overgrown in the most enchanting manner by oak forests, groves of palm, and lianas, while the delicious sea-breezes of a semi-tropical clime, and the historic legends and associations of the past invest them with a wonderful poetic haze, like the golden vapor which sunset weaves over the roofs and spires of a distant town.—S.G.W. Benjamin in Harper's Magazine, November.
THE SORT OF GIRL TO GET.
The true girl has to be sought for. She does not parade herself as show goods. She is not fashionable. Generally, she is not rich. But, oh! what a heart she has when you find her! So large and pure and womanly. When you see it you wonder if those showy things outside were women. If you gain her love, your two thousand are millions. She'll not ask you for a carriage or a first-class house. She'll wear simple dresses, and turn them when necessary, with no vulgar magnificat to frown upon her economy. She'll keep every thing neat and nice in your sky parlor, and give you such a welcome when you come home that you'll think your parlor higher than ever. She'll entertain true friends on a dollar, and astonish you with the new thought, how little happiness depends on money. She'll make you love home (if you don't you're a brute), and teach you how to pity, while you scorn a poor, fashionable society that thinks itself rich, and vainly tries to think itself happy.
Now, do not, I pray you, say any more, "I can't afford to marry." Go, find the true woman, and you can. Throw away that cigar, burn up that switch-cane, be sensible yourself, and seek your wife in a sensible way.—Oliver Wendell Holmes.
RAPIDITY OF THOUGHT.
By way of ascertaining just how fast we can think, experiments, with the use of several kinds of apparatus, have been made by scientific men. In all the experiments the time required for a simple thought was never less than the fortieth of a second. In other words the mind can perform not more than twenty-four hundred simple thoughts a minute, being the rate for persons of middle age. From these figures it will be seen how absurd are many popular notions in regard to the fleetness of thought, how exaggerated are the terrors of remorseless memory that mortals have invented for the moment of dying. And we may reasonably "discount" also the stories told by men saved from drowning, cut down before death by hanging, or rescued from sudden peril from other causes. No doubt a man may think of a great multitude of experiences, good or bad, in a few minutes; but that the thoughts and emotions of a long life may surge through the mind during the seconds of asphyxiation is impossible.