ENTERTAINING VARIETIES. 541 



ENTERTAINING VARIETIES. 



Says "Blackwood's Magazine": "The man who first suggested an 



electric telegraph, in a letter to the 'Scots Magazine' in the year 1745, Charles 

 Marshall, was looked on as having dealings with the Evil One, and had to leave 

 his native country and go to America. When Ronalds, about the year 1817, laid 

 his plans for an electric telegraph before the English Government, they would 

 not even take the trouble to investigate the matter. An under secretary, in the 

 usual official style, wrote him that he was l directed by his Majesty's Secretary of 

 State, etc., to inform Mr. Ronalds that a telegraph is of no use in time of peace, 

 and that in time of war the semaphore then in use was quite sufficient for the 

 purpose.'" And as late as 1879 one of the "most able and experienced elec- 

 tricians of the day " was in a state of mind to say before a select committee 

 that he did not think the telephone would be much used in England; that he 

 fancied the descriptions they got of its use in America were a little exaggerated ; 

 " but there are conditions in America which necessitate the use of instruments 

 of this kind more than here. Here we have a superabundance of messengers, 

 errand-boys, and things of that kind. In America they are wanted." 



Tanner, in his narrative of a captivity among the North American In- 

 dians, says that, when a certain chief named Picheto was one night much alarmed 

 by a furious storm, he got and offered some tobacco to the thunder, entreating 

 it to stop. 



Prisons as Clinics. Dr. Maudsley remarks: "Another promising but 



strangely neglected field of inquiry is a study of criminals. The time will come, 

 ought to have come now, when prisons shall be used for the systematic investi- 

 gation of the antecedents, and for the clinical study of the varieties of the crimi- 

 nal nature, just as asylums are used for the clinical study of diseased minds, hos- 

 pitals for the study of diseased bodies. It may not be doubted whether half the 

 books that have been written on moral philosophy would be worth one good 

 book, by an earnest and industrious inquirer, who should undertake the scien- 

 tific study of the inmates of a single prison." 



Jfax Muller says, in his sketch of Kant, that for the last twenty years 



of his life he always had guests at dinner two to five that he demanded punc- 

 tuality, that the guests proceeded to the dining-room talking of no subject more 

 profound than the weather, that politics (and we may add science, natural his- 

 tory, etc.) was a frequent subject of conversation, but anything of the nature of 

 metaphysics was rigorously excluded. Though of a very slender constitution, 

 all his life through Kant had managed to keep himself in health by persistent 

 adherence to certain maxims of diet and regimen. One of these was that the 

 germs of disease might often be avoided if the breathing were systematically car- 

 ried on by the nose ; and for that reason Kant always in his later years walked 

 alone with mouth closed. He was also careful to avoid perspiration. He walked 

 after dinner alone, and then attended to business or read newspapers and mis- 

 cellaneous books. As the darkness began to fall, he would take his seat at the 

 stove, and, with his eye fixed on the tower of Lobenicht church, would ponder 

 on the problems which exercised his mind. One evening, however, as he looked, 

 a change had occurred the church-tower was no longer visible. His neighbor's 



