MOORE’S RURAL NEW-YORKER: AN AGRICULTU RAL AND FAMILY JOURNAL 
For Moore’s Rural New-Yorker. 
EARTH VOICES. 
BY E. >T. PHILLIPS. 
I love the light of summer’s sun, 
The music of the wood. 
The voice of bird, and streamlet, heard 
In echoing solitude. 
I love the smile of closing day, 
The night, with balmy air, 
When elves are gay, and fairies play 
With blossoms sweet and fair. 
I love the rocky river side, 
The solitary lake. 
The hollow roar, upon the shore, 
Where ocean billows break. 
The breezes of the summer time, 
The winds of winter night, 
With every swell, to mem’ry tell, f 
Of sadness or delight. 
And yielding thunder of the blast, 
Is echoed, in my heart; 
When forests torn, bewail and mourn, 
As summer joys depart. 
Can I but love the whisp’ring wind,— 
The sea, the lovely lake,— 
The rushing stream, the evening beam,— 
The harmonies they make 1 
No ! these, and nature’s spotless dress. 
In every changing nrood. 
Are ever dear—her (lowers appear, 
With soul, and sense endued. 
in all the solitudes of earth, 
I hear the choral song; 
The notes of praise, she used to raise. 
Before the birth of wrong. 
Albion, Orleans Co., N. Y. 
THE FUNCTION OF THE EAR- 
BY W. H. BRISTOL. 
Hearing —distinguishing sounds by the 
ear, is the only medium of gaining a knowl¬ 
edge of things byphonation or sound. The 
ear is so delicately formed—so mysteriously 
and wonderfully adapted to perceive the 
least vibration of sound, that it has ever 
been admired for its skillful organization, 
and for its strangely peculiar capacities.— 
It is at once the source of pleasure and of 
study. It teaches us the beautiful har¬ 
mony that brightens in the air, or gushes, 
music-like, in the golden sunbeams. Its 
chords are ever vibrating with melody, and 
the timid brain reels with delicious joy. It 
is the fountain whence the inner spirit draws 
its imitating beauty, or learns what rapture 
dwells without. 
The silent pulses of the air are heard, 
and felt, as though some inspiring wing 
were passing by, stirring the silver atmos¬ 
phere to liquid waltzes as the dimpling 
wavelets swell. Without it, what is sound ? 
The seraph as lie chants his burning song 
amid the stars, or weaves his golden lyre- 
chords amid the radiant pencilings of light, 
and there breathes out his heavenly soul, 
— it tells no tale of love to the dark ear as 
its senseless nerves cling deadly on their 
shattered wall. They wake not to the thrill 
of melody without—their greenness has 
left them —their fragrance is gone 1 The 
cataract may pour its lead-like thunder from 
the sky,—the cloud soaring ocean may tum¬ 
ble its tumultuous billows on the rocking 
shore—but the ear is dead to their harmo¬ 
nious majesty. The spirit is robbed of its 
good right wing, and falls fluttering in 
yearning agony. There is no tone of joy 
from the happy bird whose treble throat 
carols a fascinating song for her callow 
young. There is no music falling from the 
“ spheres” or rising from the murmuring 
stream. No! —all is hushed to silence 
dreadful as that which was throned upon 
the uncreated, ere the Voice of Life had 
called it into being. 
How little do we appreciate gifts like this, 
until we are suddenly and unfortunately de¬ 
prived of them! Without it, no kindly hu¬ 
man voice can stir the heart to ecstacy,— 
no word of consolation, nor prayer, nor 
wish, can give unto the dying hour a holy 
tunefulness, or wing each thought with 
magic quietude. No evening song, when 
shades of night draw round, can still the 
cares of day, nor charm away the tearful 
dawn of melancholy. Heaven may pour 
its sweetest accents; the earth, with its un¬ 
numbered lyres, may waft them, or the 
tinkling air may play amid their cunning 
swells of witchery,—yet to the ear—the 
silent ear, there is no melody!—its chords 
are hushed by a leaden hand. 
But wake it once again to life!—’tis hard 
to dream thus, when the spirit spurns the 
saddening idality! Ah! what strains!—past 
expression, like harps descending from the 
clouds and sounding as they fall! Every 
bough is tuneful, and each streamlet hath 
a voice. The leaf quivers its little note, and 
the zephyr twirls its laughter breath around 
the fragrant petals of the summer-tinted 
flowers. Low whispers in myriad compa¬ 
nies, steal up from the blooming earth, as 
though every perfume had a thousand mys¬ 
tic tongues. And now,—a deeper harmony 
is flooding on the air. The thunder’s 
throttled peal seems shaken from the quiv¬ 
ering clouds, and the falling rain beats a 
universal music. The surging winds are at 
play in the roaring forest, and the giant oak 
moans his childish bars. The high wave 
leaps and mounts with a sweeping anthem 
to the sky, then swoops unto the shore like 
an o’erhungry eagle, dashing on his fright¬ 
ened prey. The heavy throbbings of the 
ocean beat, and dash,and madden into foam, 
then sink with a closing tumult to the far 
depths below. Yet to the rightly-attuned 
ear, this all is concord,—the beautiful min¬ 
gled with the majestic,—the simple with 
the sublime. 
It is the working of a God that can be 
seen only in his works,—that can be felt 
only from the manifestation of his power; 
but above these and nearest to Him, the car 
holds converse, and his voice swelling from 
nothing, ascends the airy scale of sound, 
and the heavens shatter to its thrill, and 
the old earth bears it like a burden on his 
trembling bosom; the skies take it up, and 
the far distance buries it, but it never dies 
—it is always heard, for it belongs to the 
endless dominion of the ever-listening ear. 
RoyaUon, N. Y., 1851. 
NOTES BY ASMODEUS,-AT HOME. 
GOETHE. 
I like Goethe because he was a hater 
of all pretenders —all counterfeiters of truth 
and nature. His sympathy with the beau¬ 
tiful and true was intense; if he loved 
Princes it was only such as, in his opinion, 
governed honestly for the good of the peo¬ 
ple. He held the doctrine that government 
should by its laws only strive to lessen the 
mass of evil, instead of aiming to introduce 
universal happiness. As an excuse for not 
hating France with true German hatred, 
he says: “ How could I, to whom culture 
and barbarism alone are things of conse¬ 
quence, hate a nation which is one of the 
most cultivated in Europe—and to whom 
I am myself indebted for so great a part of 
my own culture ?” 
Such was Goethe’s love of true charac- 
ter as opposed to the fictitious or pretend¬ 
ing, that he said, “ There is nothing in a 
fool distorted, perverted, or half and half, 
they are complete fools, but even a fool 
complete, weighs something in nature’s 
scales.” He preferred spontaneous folly to 
that artificially manufactured virtue, that 
incarnate hypocrisy, from which nothing 
good, true, and disinterested can grow. 
In relation to moral and political revolu¬ 
tions Goethe says, “ all attempts to intro¬ 
duce any foreign innovations for which the 
necessity does not lie deep in the heart of 
the nation itself, are a folly; and all such 
intended reforms remain without result.— 
They are without God, who holds himself 
aloof from such botchwork.” Whenever 
any real necessity for any great reform ex¬ 
ists, God goes with it, and it succeeds. He 
was visibly with Christ and his apostles, 
and their first disciples, for the appearance 
of the new doctrine of love, was a real 
want, a necessity for all the nations. He 
was as visible with Luther, for the purifica¬ 
tion of that doctrine, too long disfigured by 
priestcraft, was equally necessary to man’s 
spiritual comfort.” 
HORACE GREELY. 
The following paragraph from Noah’s 
Sunday Times, sketches Horace Greely 
so much to the life, that all who read will 
exclaim “nobody but Noah could do this.” 
If it is not a posthumous discovered contri¬ 
bution of the ex-master in Israel, his man¬ 
tle has fallen on a worthy successor. How 
true that the lymphatic Greely has “ too 
little of the animal in his nature, to be a 
good practical philosopher.” How else can 
we account for his great and constant lean- 
ins: toward communism ? Did he but feel 
within him the infirmities of the flesh, his 
spirit would be weaker and his faith less.— 
Could he but exchange only for a brief pe¬ 
riod his own abstemious desires, and impul¬ 
sive ever-goading industry, for the pleasure- 
loving, labor-hating besettings, which so 
generally afflict our humanity, liow scon 
would more than half his Utopian isms go 
to the winds: 
“The threadbare white coat, with one 
side of the collar turned up and the other 
down, like the ears of a “ half lop” rabbit 
—the hat, in which the glue and the nap 
were so inextricably united by repeated rain 
storms, that the sharpest currycomb could 
not detach them—the cowhide boots, that 
“never learned to shine”—the neckcloth, 
with its “Jack Ketch” tie —the half-bent 
form, that moves through the streets with 
side swing, as if the hinges on one side were 
greased and on the other rusty—the well- 
formed intellectual head, and the milk-white 
face, in which the opposite expressions of 
sagacity and credulity seemed strangely 
blended ; in short, in all the component parts 
of that mixture of the political tactician, the 
visionary, the controversialist, the philan¬ 
thropist, and the sloven, called Horace Gree¬ 
ley, lias left for London in the Baltic, and 
will appear at the Crystal Palace, in due 
time, as a part of the American contribution 
to the World’s Fair. 
We think we see him now, daguerreo- 
typing the whole scene through the lenses 
of his eyes, upon the clear brain behind 
them, for reproduction in the Tribune. Su¬ 
perficial observers will take him for a zany; 
but whoso tries the temper and edge of his 
intellectual metal, will find that if not as 
polished as a Damascus scimetar, he is as 
keen as a Yankee whittle. Exeter Hall 
will make much of him, and he will not ob¬ 
ject to a little tickling; for his mental epi¬ 
dermis is as sensitive to the touch of flat¬ 
tery as if he were a pretty woman. 
Nature came within an ace of making 
Mr. Greely a great man; and if his tem¬ 
perament had been bilious, or even san¬ 
guine, instead .of lymphatic, and his pas¬ 
sions stronger he might have been one.— 
as it is, he has too little of the animal in 
his nature to be a practical philosopher.— 
Man in the aggregate is somewhat of a 
beast, and his affinity with matter as well 
as with mind, renders him a stubborn sub¬ 
ject for the experiments of speculative phi¬ 
losophers. Mr. Greely will find plenty of 
this class in London, and an infinite abun¬ 
dance in Paris. We hope he will have a 
pleasant time with them; and that in look¬ 
ing through the social fragment with a view 
of breaking down the partition walls, re¬ 
moving the floors, and incorporating the 
tenants in one grand joint stock company, 
they may experience as much self satisfac¬ 
tion as the mad astronomer did who fancied 
that he had discovered an improved method 
for regulating the motions of the planets. 
THE WEDDING. 
The following impromptu speech, deliv¬ 
ered by Senator Seward, at one of the stop¬ 
ping places on the line of the Erie Railroad, 
is very happy and poetical: 
Gentlemen, I am very glad to see yon, 
but have no speech to make. I am not a 
man of secret sentiments. I have no tlio’ts 
upon public affairs that I have not freely 
discussed with you, and with every one who 
has wished to know them. I have no re¬ 
served principles—[applause] and I have 
only a moment to tell you what we have 
been doing. I have been to the Weddino- 
gentlemen, to the great Wedding, in which 
the retired water of Lake Erie was the bride, 
and the old salt Sea the groom. The hoary 
Alleghanies gave away the bride, the Sus- 
quehannah, the Delaware, the Canisteo, the 
Genesee, and others, were the bridesmaids. 
The ring was the gift of the merchants of 
New York —an iron ring woven in two 
strands was forged and manufactured, and 
brought together here by Alexander Allen. 
If you want to see the ring, look under these 
wheels gentlemen. 
There were two parties absent, who had 
protested against the banns, and although 
their absence was agreeable to others, their 
presence would have been agreeable to me. 
One was the Syracuse Convention for the 
dissolution of the Union, and the other was 
the South Carolina Convention for secession. 
Nevertheless, it is hoped, and believed by 
wise men, that this ceremony will impress 
upon all men the conviction that the integ¬ 
rity of the Union is beyond the reach of 
envy, malice and all uncharitableness.— 
Gentlemen, if I should try to say more, the 
inexorable Priest who conducts this cere¬ 
mony would cut me short with his shrill 
voice. So I must bid you farewell. God 
bless you. 
A FAIR OFFER. 
Dr. Franklin, it is said, once made the 
following offer to a young man: 
“ Make a full estimate of all you owe and 
all that is owing to you. As fast as you 
can collect, pay over to those you owe. If 
you can not, renew your note every year, 
and get the best security you can. Go to 
businessdiligently and be industrious; waste 
no idle moments; be very economical in all 
things; discard all pride; be faithful in your 
duty to God, be regular and hearty in pray¬ 
er morning and night; attend church and 
meeting regularly every Sunday, and do 
unto all men as you would they should do 
to you. If you are too needy in circum¬ 
stances to give to the poor, do whatever 
else is in your power for them cheerfully, 
but if you can, help the poor and unfortu¬ 
nate. Pursue this course diligently and sin • 
cerely for seven years, and if you are not 
happy, comfortable, not independent in your 
circumstances, come to me and I will pay 
your debts. Young people, try it 
189 
LITTLE THINGS; 
THE INDEX OF CHARACTER. 
Those trifling acts which show considera¬ 
tion for others, where neglect might per¬ 
haps pass unobserved, but to which true 
kindness will prompt, are better tests of real 
goodness of heart than courtesy of manner 
in society, or deeds of public charity which 
may spring from a desire of approval. This 
genuine benevolence is more clearly obser¬ 
vable in the deportment towards the neg¬ 
lected, or, when shown in a solicitude for 
the guilty, where its manifestation may 
bring censure rather than eclat. I remem¬ 
ber an instance which illustrates that seem- 
ingt rifles are, sometimes, true indications of 
character. 
A few years since, in traveling, it chanced 
that I spent the night at the house of some 
friends of my mother, who were previously 
strangers to me. The time of my arrival 
proved rather an unpropitious one for a 
first visit. A general house-cleaning was 
in progress, and the good lady of the house 
was fearful there was not a place in it fit 
for me to sit or sleep in. It was evening 
when I arrived, and operations had been 
suspended for the time; but every thing 
was in confusion. 
f Much fatigued, and suffering from a se¬ 
vere pain in my head, I retired at an early 
hour. The room assigned me for the night 
was the same to be occupied by the two 
daughters of my hostess, whom, as they had 
gone out with some young companions for 
a moonlight walk, I had not yet seen. A 
portion of the furniture of the apartment 
had been removed, but the nice bed that 
had been placed there for temporary con¬ 
venience, was so fresh and neat, and its de¬ 
licious softness so grateful to my frame, 
worn by long journeying, that, despite my 
weariness and pain, I soon fell asleep. 
' I was awakened from a pleasant dream 
by the sound of voices below stairs. The 
sisters had returned from their walk, and 
I heard their mother announce to them my 
arrival. 
Again I fell into a slumber, and was 
aroused by some one in the room. On ope¬ 
ning my eyes, I saw a figure leaving my 
bedside, which I supposed to be one of the 
young ladies who had been taking a peep 
at me in my sleep, as she proceeded to the 
other bed, and I heard her preparing for 
rest. Pain forced me to close my eyes 
again; but how do you think I was enabled 
to decide, and correctly, upon the disposi¬ 
tion of those two girls, without seeing their 
faces, or hearing them speak one word —or, 
but one; and how on the next morning, I 
knew, just by looking at them, which re¬ 
tired first? It was simply in this way: — 
When the first who entered the room left 
my bedside, she went to her own, and, 
drawing towards her a chair, she took off 
her heavy walking shoes, and, throwing 
them to a little distance, they met, the un¬ 
carpeted floor with a concussion which made 
me start. I then heard her go to a closet, 
near her bed, and commence rummaging 
among its contents, apparently for some 
missing article. Then opening the door of 
the apartment, she called “ Frances hut, 
her sister not hearing, she closed it heavily, 
and jumping into bed, d ew a stand towards 
her, and appeared to be busied in reading 
for a few moments; then she extinguished 
the light and her breathing soon indicated 
that she slept 
Now these things, slight as they might 
seem, jarred very disagreeably on my feel¬ 
ings; the more so, from my peculiar state 
of mind and body at the time,—not merely 
the sound themselves, but the want of sen¬ 
sibility they implied, which, I thought, 
would instinctively prompt the noiseless step 
and gentle hand, when in the apartment of 
the weary who are seeking rest. While 
these thoughts were passing in my mind, 
for I was now thoroughly awakened, the 
other sister* entered the room. 
Mary, on the contrary, was one of those 
persons with whom, without really design¬ 
ing any unkindness, self is so predominant, 
as to be the centre of all their thoughts and 
actions, but to whom the slight sacrifices 
they make seem so great, that they imagine 
no one steps aside so much for others as 
themselves. 
By looking down on the top of a wax 
candle a little cup full of melted wax may 
be seen just around the wick. The cool air 
keeps the outside hard so that a rim is 
formed which prevents the melted wax from 
running down the side. The wax in the 
little cup goes up through the wick to be 
burned, just as oil does in the wick of a 
lamp. It goes up through the little passage 
in the cotton wick, because very small chan¬ 
nels or pores, have the power in themselves 
of sucking up liquids. This power is called 
capillary attraction. 
When the candle is blown out* a smoke 
arises from the wick. If a bit of light paper 
be held in this smoke, the candle will light 
again without touching the flame to the 
wick. This shows that the melted wax 
sucked up through the wick is turned into 
vapor which burns and communicates fire 
to the wick. 
When the candle is lighted, the heat of 
the burning vapor keeps on melting more 
wax, and that is sucked up within the flame, 
where it is turned into vapor and burned; 
and this process is continued until the wax 
is all used up, and the candle is gone, or 
burned up, as it is termed. 
Notwithstanding the flame of the candle 
looks flat, it is both round and hollow, and 
runs up to a point. It is thus drawn up by 
the hot air. Hot air always rises, and that 
is the way smoke is taken up a chimney.— 
It goes up with the current of heated air. 
The bright flame of a heated candle is of¬ 
ten no thicker than a sheet of paper; it 
does not even touch the wick. That the 
flame is hollow, may be seen by taking a 
piece of white paper and holding it for a 
second or two down upon the candle flame 
keeping the flame steady. When the black 
from the smoke has been rubbed off, it will 
be seen that the paper is scorched in the 
shape of a ring,.while inside of the ring it 
is only soiled, and not scarcely singed at all. 
Inside of this hollow flame is the vapor 
spoken of just now. By putting one end of 
a bent tube into the middle of the flame, 
and the other end in a bottle, the vapor or 
gas from the candle will mix with the air in 
the bottle. If fire be set this mixture of air 
and gas, it will explode with a report 
The flame of the candle, then, is a little 
shining case with gas inside of it, and air on 
the outside, so that the case of flame is be¬ 
tween the gas and the air. The gas keeps 
goinof into the flame to burn, and, when the 
candle burns properly, none oi it passes out 
through the flame, and none of the air gets 
through the flame to the gas. The great¬ 
est heat of the candle is in the case of flame. 
A candle will not burn without air. If it 
has not enough air it goes out or burns bad¬ 
ly, so that some of the vapor inside of the 
flame comes out in the form of smoke. A 
candle smokes because the wick is so large 
that in burning it makes too much fuel, or 
vapor, in proportion to the air that can get 
to it; consequently some of the vapor must 
escape in the form of smoke. 
The smoke that comes out of a candle is 
what burns and makes the light. This 
smoke is a cloud of small dust or bits of 
charcoal, or carbon. These are made in 
the flame, and burned by it, and while burn¬ 
ing make the flame bright. They are burn¬ 
ed thq moment they are made, and the 
flame goes on making more of them, and 
that is how the flame keeps bright. 
These little grains of carbon are made in 
the case of flame itself, where the strongest 
heat is. The great heat separates them 
from the gas which comes from the melted 
wax, and as soon as they touch the air on 
Gently closing the door, she slipped off' j 
her shoes at the threshold, and going on ! t he outside of the thin flame they hum. 
tip toe to the bedside, she softly whispered j Q ar bon, or charcoal, is what causes the 
“ Mary?” but her sister was sleeping, and j brightness of all lamps and candles, as well 
she soon carefully took her place at her side, j as gas light; hence there must be carbon 
“Mary,” I said to myself— “’tis a sweet j in what they are made of.— Dickens’ 
name, hut, I fear she is not gentle”—for I j Household Words. 
felt that a person’s real disposition is more i -—--- 
clearly revealed, in their unguarded moments I The color of lightning is variously orange 
and in trifles, than where it would be more ! white and blue, verging to violet. Its hue 
conspicuous. But Frances — I felt assured j appears to depend upon the electrical con- 
I should find her amiable. What a sooth- ! ditiQn and height of the atmosphere. The 
ing influence had her gentleness upon my ; more electricity there is passing through 
nerves, which had been disturbed by the ; the air in a given time, the whiter and more 
carelessness manifested by her sister! In ! dazzling is the light. Violet and blue col- 
the morning, when I awoke, the sun was ' ored lightnings are observed to be dischar- 
shining full into the chamber, and the young | ged from storm-clouds high in the atmos- 
ladies had nearly finished their toilette. I j phere where the air is rarified; and, in like 
recognized Frances at a glance; there was j manner, the electric spark, when made to 
a softness and sensibility in the expression j pass thro’ the receiver of an air-pump, ex- 
of her ey es which spoke a gentle, loving j hibits a blue or violet light in proportion as 
spirit; and a long after acquaintance con- ! the vacuum is complete. 
firmed the conclusion I formed concerning j ___-___ 
her from the slight circumstances of that 
night. I found her always kind and con¬ 
siderate for the comfort and happiness of 
others, ever avoiding, with delicacy and 
tact, trespassing on the rights, or wounding 
the feelings of any one by word or act. 
Forty-five pounds of salt are contained 
in one hundred pounds of the water of the 
Dead Sea. 
The muscles of the human jaw produce 
a power equal to 434 pounds. 
