AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
395 
chased away by the gout. If you hear of 
sixteen or eighteen pounds of human flesh, 
they belong to me. I look as if a curate had 
been taken out of me.” 
So he wrote in the last letter but one in 
these volumes. Two or three months, and 
all was over; this jocular Canon had fired 
his last shot; this (Oxford) Fellow of infin¬ 
ite jest, of most excellent fancy, had'gone 
to the tomb of all the—Yoricks. lie died on 
the 22d of February, 1845, of water on the 
chest, and was buried without show of any 
kind, in the cemetry of Kensal Green. 
Funny Ruse of a Revolutionary Tory 
Lady. —A gentleman residing in Kingston, 
R. I., writes the following revolutionary 
anecdote to the Boston Traveller:—“ In 
1778, while our country was at war with 
England, the tories, as they were called, 
unwilling to espouse their country’s cause. 
4 left their country for their country’s good ’ 
Among the number who thus left for the 
British dominions in Nova Scotia, was my 
aunt F-, with her tory husband.—During 
the war, an American privateer was seen 
approaching L-, where my aunt and other 
Americans were located. At the approach 
of the ugly looking stranger, all the Ameri¬ 
cans fled except my aunt who kept a small 
store at the place of entry. Having secured 
what she could from her shop, she hastened 
to her house to secure her valuables there, 
also; but the officers were too close upon 
her heels to allow her to secrete much. 
They came upon her just as she was entering 
a chamber which had previously been left 
in some confusion. Seeing the officers so 
near her, she turned in an instant, and with 
her usual quickness of invention—for she 
was always ready for a turn—said to the 
leader, “I hope you will pardon the appear¬ 
ance of my room, as we have just had the 
small pox in it, and have not had time to put 
things to rights since the patients were 
carried off.’ It was ‘ a word and blow,’ as 
we say. In his haste to escape, the officer 
turned upon his heel, and in turning fell over 
the staircase and rolled down two flights of 
stairs into the street, dropping from its scab¬ 
bard an elegantly mounted sword, which he 
left behind as a prize to my aunt. Picking 
himself up as best he could he was joined by 
his comrades, and very soon the privateer 
had her sails spread, and was out of sight 
and out of danger, leaving my aunt to laugh 
over her well timed stratagem, and to hunt 
for her money box, which was found some 
months after among the current bushes in 
the garden, just where she placed it herself 
when she took it from the shop.” 
A Very Knowing Dog. —Nelson, of the 
Northern Gazette, says—“ A gentleman in 
Ausdina, Conn., sends his dog on the arrival 
of the mail by the railroad train, for his 
Daily “ Times,” and the dog returns to his 
master with the paper in his mouth. The 
other day a New York “ Herald” was 
handed him by mistake. The dog dropped 
the paper, and springing upon the counter, 
picked out a “ Times,” and wagging his tail 
in a can’t-come-it sort of manner, de¬ 
parted.” !!! 
A dog of good judgement, too. 
Moral Character. —There is nothing 
which adds so much to the beauty and power 
of a man as a good character. It dignifies 
him in every station, exalts him in every 
period of life. Such a character is more to 
be desired than every thing else on earth. 
No servile foot, no crouching sycophant, no 
treacherous honor-seeker, ever bore such a 
character; the pure joys of righteousness 
ever spring in such a person. If young men 
but knew how much a good character would 
dignify and exalt them—how glorious it 
would make their prospects even in this life ; 
never should we find them yielding to the 
grovelling and base-born purposes of human 
nature. 
THE MOUNTAINS. 
BY REV. THOS. HILL, OF WALTHAM, MASS. 
Tlie mountains in Winter, the mountains I love ; 
Below the black forest, the white peaks above ; 
Along the calm valleys, the deep drifted snow, 
While over the summits the winter winds blow; 
The moose and the deer through the underwood roam, 
And the chicadee tads in the fir trees a home. 
The mountains in summer, the mountains I love ; 
Green birches below, and the grey peaks above; 
Along the calm valleys the crystal brooks flow, 
While the flowers on the summit are white as the snow, 
And the dark forests ring, at the close of the day, 
With the white throated Peverly’s sweet roundelay. 
The mountains in Autumn, the mountains I love; 
All clothed in full glories, below and above ; 
With bright glowing maple, with beech in rich brown ; 
Bright forests below, and above a white crown. 
Oh! the richness and beauty of all the long year 
Are reserved for the hills in October to wear. 
GENERAL WASHINGTON'S LAST VOTE. 
Every incident in the life of Washington 
is all of interest. That plain, heroic magni¬ 
tude of mind which distinguished him above 
all other men was evident in all his actions. 
Patriotism chastened by sound judgment and 
careful thought, prompted his public acts, 
and made them examples for the study and 
guidance of mankind. It has been said that 
no one can have the shortest interview with 
a truly great man, rvithout being made sen¬ 
sible of his superiority. Of too many, who 
have some way earned the title of great, this 
is by no means true. Its applicability to the 
character of Washington is verified in the 
following interesting circumstance related 
by a correspondent of the Charleston Cour¬ 
ier : 
“ I was present,” says this correspondent, 
“ when General Washington gave his last 
vote. It was in the spring of 1799, in the 
town of Alexandria. He died on the 11th of 
December following. The court-house of 
Fairfax County was then over the market- 
house, and immediately fronting Gadsby’s 
tavern. The entrance to it was by a slight 
flight of crazy steps on the outside. The 
election was progressing—several thousands 
of persons were in the court-house yard and 
immediate neighboring streets ; and I was 
standing on Gadsby’s steps when the father 
of his country drove up, and immediately 
approached the court-house steps ; and when 
within a yard or two of them, I saw eight or 
ten good-looking men, from different direc¬ 
tions, certainly without the least concert, 
spring simultaneously, and place themselves 
in positions to uphold and support the steps 
should they fall in the General’s ascent of 
them. I was immediately at his back, and 
in that position entered the court-house with 
him—followed in his wake through a dense 
crowd to the polls—heard him vote—returned 
with him to the outward crowd—heard 
him cheered by more than two thousand 
persons as he entered his carriage—and saw 
his departure. 
There were five or six candidates on the 
bench sitting ; and as the General approached 
them they arose in a body and bowed 
smilingly ; and the salutation having been 
returned very gracefully, the General imme¬ 
diately cast his eyes toward the registry of 
the polls, when Col. Dencale (I think it was) 
said—•“ Well, General, how do you vote 1” 
The General looked at the candidates, and 
said—“ Gentlemen, I vote for measures, not 
for men and turning to the recording table, 
audibly pronounced his vote—saw it entered 
—made a graceful bow and retired.” 
MAKING A NEEDLE. 
I wonder if any little girl who may read 
this ever thought how many people are all 
the time at work in making the things which 
she every day uses. What can be more 
common, and, you may think, more simple, 
than a needle 1 Yet, if you do not know it, 
I can tell you that it takes a great many 
persons to make a needle ; and it takes a 
great deal of time, too. Let us take a peep 
into a needle factory: In going over the 
premises, we must pass hither and thither, 
and walk into the next street and back again, 
and take a drive to a mill, in order to see the 
whole process. We find one chamber of the 
shop is hung round with coils of bright wire, 
of all thicknesses, from the stout kinds used 
for codfish hooks to that for the finest cam¬ 
bric needles. A bundle has been cut off; 
the bits need straightening, for they came off 
from coils. 
The bundle is thrown into a red hot fur¬ 
nace ; then taken out, and rolled backward 
and forward on a table until the wires are 
straight.. This process is called “ rubbing 
straight.” We now see a mill for grinding 
needles. We go down into the basement, 
and find a needle-pointer seated on his bench. 
He takes up two dozen or so of the wires, 
and rolls them between his thumb and fin¬ 
gers, with their ends on the grindstone, first 
one and then the other. We have now the 
wires straight and pointed at both ends. 
Next is a machine which flattens and gutters 
the heads of ten thousand needles an hour. 
Observe the little gutters at the head of your 
needle. Next comes the punching of the 
eyes ; and the boy who does it punches eight 
thousand in an hour, and he does it so fast 
your eye can hardly keep pace with him. 
The splitting follows, which is running a fine 
wire through a dozen, perhaps, of these 
twin needles. 
A woman, with a little anvil before her, 
files between the heads and separates them. 
They are now complete needles, but rough 
and rusty, and, what is worse, they easily 
bend. A poor needle, you will say. But the 
hardening comes next. They are heated in 
batches in a furnace, and, when red hot, are 
thrown in a pan of cold water. Next, they 
must be tempered ; and this is done by roll¬ 
ing them backward and forward on a hot 
metal plate. The polishing still remains to 
be done. On a very coarse cloth needles 
are spread to the number of forty or fifty 
thousand. Emery dust is strewed over them, 
oil is sprinkled, and soft soap daubed by 
spoonfuls over the cloth ; the cloth is then 
rolled hard up, and, with several others of 
the same kind, thrown into a sort of wash- 
pot, to roll to and fro for twelve hours or 
more. They come out dirty enough ; but 
affer a rinsing in clean hot water, and a toss¬ 
ing in sawdust, they look as bright as can 
be, and are ready to be sorted and put up for 
sale. But the sorting ’and the doing up in 
papers, you may imagine, is quite a work 
by itself. __ 
Learning to Swim. —The teacher is sup¬ 
plied with a pole some ten feet long, to which 
a cord is fastened, which cord connects with 
a strap placed around the waist of the pupil. 
Thus the teacher, standing on the shore, or 
the wharf, can easily guide the movements 
of the swimmer ; and the child acquires a 
mastery of the art much sooner, and gains 
self-confidence—which i the real secret of 
the swimmer’s power—more readily than 
when supported on cork floats. Any mother 
could teach her child in a few days, with 
little inconvenience to herself, by this happy 
thought, an art that may save that child’s 
life. Girls, by this method, will acquire that 
confidence which by any previously prac¬ 
ticed mode it has been found so difficult to 
give the feminines.— New-York Mirror . 
