LADIES' AMULET. - Monroe County Library System

A Prudent Wife and a Strong Apron.
Mrs. W., consort and help meet of Mr. W.
merchant of New York, was a Very economica
woman, and, if her eulogist was not mistaken
hod a very strong apron. The circumstance narrated
by theiriend of Mrs. W. was as follows:—
Mr. W. was a merchant in affluent circumstances,
did a very heavy business, and conducted all his
affairs with the utmost regularity. Every depart
ment of business was completely systematized
even family expenditures were restricted to regular
daily appropriations, and no surer is the sailing
master of a ship to make his observation
work his/traverse and ascertain his exact latitude
and longitude every noon, than was Mr. W. to
have all his accounts nicely balanced, and ascertain
his exact whereabouts in business every night.
But as wise, prudent and punctilious as he was,
he could not withstand the temptation to overtrading
during one of the great paper expansions;
and when the revulsion came, he found himself
embarrassed beyond all his efforts to extricate
himself. He had stood firm as a rock while many
of the most reputable houses tumbled to ruins
around him, but he could not collect money due
him from his best customers, and there was one
remaining note of ten thousand dollars that would
fall due in a few days, and he could devise no way
to meet it. The notice came from the Sank, but
three days remained, and every resource (ailed.—
The first of these three days was spent in fruitless
attempts to borrow. The second was as fruitlessly
spent in trying to force a sale of goods. Nobody
had money lo lend—no body had money to
purchase goods at any price.
The last day of grace arrived, and horror was
depicted in hi3 countenance. Mrs. W. knew nothing
of his troubles, and on perceiving him evidently
in great distress of mind, she insisted on
knowing what was the cause of his trouble. It
was folly to conceal his ruin from her, and he condescended
to make her acquainted with the cause
of his misery. How much, she inquired, will save
you from failure ? Ten thousand dollars, he replied,
will pay my last note in bank; but for want
of this I must suffer the disgrace of having my
note protested, assign my property for the benefit
of my creditors, and suffer my name to go into
the world as a bankrupt. Is this all, said she ?—
Why bless me, my dear Mr. W., I can supply you
with that sum without going out of the house.—
Not wailing to hear the question he was preparing
to ask, she tripped up stairs, and in less time
than I have occupied in telling the story, she returned
with seventeen thousand dollars in her
apron, all in change, which she had saved within
a few years from her daily allowance of market
money!
All who heard the recital of this cirenmstauce
by the friend of Mrs. W. were highly delighted
with it, save one sharp-nosed slab-sided yankee,
•who would not believe it though an angel had
told it, till he had applied the test of figures to it,
to ascertain its probability. As he finished his
calculation, and was in the act of returning his
pencil to his pocket, he burst into a roar of laughter.
All eyes were turned upon him, and the narrator
demanded what he meant by such uncivil
deportment. " Nothin' at all, stranger," said the
calculator, «only I was thinkin' what a tarnal
strong apron that ere woman must a had on, to
bring seventeen thousand dollars worth of change
down stairs. I've cyphered it out on this here
paper, and it will weigh jist half a ton, if there
ain't a single copper among the whole on't."—
Buffalo Republican.
THE LONDON SEASON, that period of the year
when, to those who look on the surface of society,
London wears its most radiant smile; when shops
are gayest and trade most brisk; when down the
thoroughfares roll and glitter the countless streams
oj indolent and voluptuous life j when the upper
class spend and the middle class make; when the
ball-room is the market of beauty, and the clubhouse
the school for scandal; when the hells yawn
lor tneir prey, and the opera-singers and fiddlers
—creatures hatched from gold, as flies from manure—swarm,
and buzz, and fatten round the hide
of the gentle public. In the cant phrase, it was
"the London season." And happy, take it altogether,
happy above the rest of the year, even
for the hapless, »that period of ferment and fever.
It is not he season for duns, and the debtor glides
about with less anxious eye; and the weather is
warm and the vagrant sleeps unfrozen, under the
starlit prtieo j and cte beggar thrives, and the
thief njoice^ thereoknewof the civilization
hxs superfluities cloldicd by all. And out of the
Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County · Historic Serials Collection
THE GEM AND LADIES' AMULET.
general corruption things sordid and things miserable
crawl forth to bask in the common sunshine
—things that perish when the first autumn winds
whistle alonL' the melancholy city. It is a gay
time for the heir and the beauty, and the statesman
and the lawyer, and the mother with her
younger daughters, and the artist with his fresh
pictures, and the poet with his new book. It is
the gay time, too, for the starved journeyman, and
the ragged outcast, that, with long stride and patient
eyes, follows for pence, the equestrian, who
bids him go and be d—d in vain. It is a gay
time for the painted harlot in a crimson pelisse;
and a gay time for the rid hag that loiters round
the threshholds of the gin shop, to buy back, in a
draught, the dreams of departed youth. It is gay,
in fine, as the fulness of a vast city is ever gay—
for vice as for innocence, for poverty as for wealth.
—Bulwer.
A BLUE JACKET'S OPINION OF STEAMERS.—r
you wish to pat an old sailor's patience to a severe
test, although it is not quite fair, talk to him
about steamboats. It is his qmstio vexata—the
hedgehog that he cannot help attacking, though
he knows that he will suffer by it. He will tell
you that this smoky, dirty craft will ruin all good
seamenship, and put all valor and gallant bearing
out of the world. Although he hates a steamer
as a nuisance, and. curses it as an imperiinance,
he has a secret and superstitious dread of it, and
holds it to be a machination of the devil. Thus
runs his opinion: " While things were as they
was, d'ye see, we blue jackets had it all our own
way; for d'ye see, if Johnny Crapau^fousht, we
wopped him; if he huilt more shijts, we took them!
And so Beelzebub grew spiteful; and ses he,
whilst a British sailor gets his grog and prog, d'ye
see, I shall never be able to shove my oar into his
boat, and turn the world topsy-turvey, d ye see ?
So he plans with the tee-totallers and the saints,
and tries to disrate the groji-tub and promote the
tea-kettle, d'ye see ? But he could not do that by
halves, for which, d'ye see, may there be an eternal
frost in his fire-place, and his coals run short.
So, having parjly failed, what does the devil do ?
Having got the right hint, he turns the tea-kettle
into a boiler—claps wheels to the ship's sides, as
if they were no better than hackney coaches, or
so many dung carts—andjbus ruins, d'ye see, the
out-and-out blue water sailor forever. I've done
it, says he, d'ye see; and I never hears one of
these varmint steamers sputtering, fizzing, hissing,
but I think I hear the devil a saying, ( Ah,
Jack, you willain, I've done you at last! d'ye
see?'"
A COUPLE OF ANECDOTES.—The author of the
caustic article on Congressional Eloquence, in the
last North American Review, in the course of his
illustrations, relates the following anecdotes, which
though old, will bear repeating :
The versatile Gen. Alexander Smyth, of Virginia—now
legislator, now soldier, now commentator
on the Apocalypse—in the course of a two
days' speech upon nothing in Committee of the
Whole, was called to order by Mr. Arthur Livermore,
of New Hampshire, for irrelevancy of matter.
" Mr. Chairman," said Mr. Smyth, " I am
not speaking for the member from New Hampshire,
but to posterity." « The gentleman," rejoined
Livermore, " is in a feir way to have his
audience before him."
There is another in relation to the forensic eloquence
of the Federal city. A Western advocate
already prominent in the Legislature had begun
somewhere near the origin of things, and the first
principles of society, and was working his way
down through Bracton and Coke to the case in
hand, in argument before the late Chief Justice
Marshall. The magnificent old gentleman was
seldom weary and never impatient * bjat he thought
that on this occasion some time might be saved.
" Brother H ," said he," there are some things
which a Chief Justice of the United, States may
be presumed to know."
GALLANTRY.—A sailor who had spent nearly
all his days on the blue waters, and knew little of
land gear, came ashore the other day, ajyl in passing
up street, saw a little woman going along with
a large muff before her. He stepped «p,very politely,
and offered to carry it for her, as he was
going the same way.
"In this country," says an English editor, " it
is considered the heighth of folly for a man to get
drunk and lie across a railroad with the idea of
obtaining repose." The same opinion obtains to
a considerable extent in America.
auir
An ill tempered person is mostly given to slander,
and knowing the intemperance of his ©wa
thoughts, seeks for hidden mean inns—in the words
of others " He sees more deviJs lhaa all hell can
hold."
INDUSTRY.—It is wonderful how much may be
done by persevering industry. A married lady of
our acquaintance counted all the principal stars
in less time than it would have taken an ordinary
woman to knit her husband a pair of stockings.
Fonteline being one dny asked by a lord i&
waiting at Versailles what difference there waa
between a clock and a woman, instantly he replied—"
A clock serves to point the hours and &
woman to make us forget them."
A harmless Irishman was eating an apple pit
with some quinces in it—"Harrah dear honey,"
said he, " if a few of these quinces give such flavor,
how would an apple pie taste made of alt
quinces 9"
UN-BUTTONED.—The Superior Court at Hartford
recently granted a pelition for divorce byUrsuline
B. Button from Josiah Button. She won't
B. Buttoned any longer.
Whales spout; so do politicians. Murder will
out; so will the measles. Good men are scarce;
so is British gold. Humbugs arc plenty; so are
fools.
An old man as he walks looks down and.thinks,
of the past; a younsr man looks forward and thinks
of the future j a child looks every where and thinks
of nothing.
Never dispise a man because his employment
is mean, or his clothing is bad. The bee is an
insect that is not very pleasing to the sight, yet
its hive affords an abundance of honey.
A wag, criticising a bad picture, said that it
looked as if the painter had rammed all his colors,
gamboge, carmine, and ultramarine, into a blunderbluss,
and fired them off at his easel.
A young lady a few evenings since said to her
beau, " please clasp my cloak." « Certainly,"
said he, thi owing his arm around her, "and the
contents too."
MODEHN HOSPITALITY—Waiting upon tlftj
"gentleman" with scrupulous civility for the
sake of the rhino.
What some people call freedom, is nothing else
than a liberty of saying and doing disagreeable*
things..
A forthcoming publication states the population
of the United Kingdom of Great Britain to 1840,
to be 27,200,000. "
POTATOE.—This vegetable should be roasted or
broiled. A boiled potntoe is like a soldier drenched
with rain—weak and inefficient.
BOTH ALIKE.—" YOU needn't feel so bis," said
a butcher's man to a young doctor; « for we are
both of a trade. We are both paid for killing."
« This is a squally affair," as Prince Albert said
to Queen Victoria, when the Royal Baby burst'
out a crying.
PUFF—An editor tickling his friend's elbow, in
the hope that his may be tickled in return, on the
principle that one good turn deserves another.
The Boston Mail says there is a man in that
c-ty who eats so much pork that he squeals in his
We dislike to see little boys smokiagcisars and
chewing tobacco; it looks as though they were in
a hurry to make fools of themsel