MOORE’S RURAL NEW-YORKER: AN AGRICULTURAL AND FAMILY NEWSPAPER. 
[Written for the Rural New-Yorker.] 
THOUGHTS FOR MY HEAR ONES. 
BY MBS. JENNY A. PTONJS. 
A thought for thee, mother, 
As evening comes on, 
The sunbeams have faded— 
Their glory in gone : 
'■* I>iin is the light, 
'' May the Father above thee. 
Love e’en as 1 love thee, 
Mother—good night. 
A thought for thee, father, 
1 gar-e on thee now ; 
Thy kicks are all whitened 
And furrowed thy brow. 
In fancy 1 gaze; 
For the shadows are creeping. 
While memory unsleeping. 
Calls back iny young days. 
A thought for ye, sisters, 
All near to me now, 
And the love-light is playing 
O’er each gentle brow, 
Star-lamps are blight, 
Your voices around me, 
Witlvmagic have bound me. 
Sisters—good night! 
A thought for ye, brothers, 
A sweet childish call, 
C-omes ringing in music 
Through chamber and hall, 
Your sister is here, 
My heart is all gladness. 
How can it hold sadness. 
When ye are so near 1 
A thought for thee, dear one, 
My vision has lied, 
And l have been talking 
Alone with the dead; 
But thou art still here, 
Nay heed not my weeping, 
I must have been sleeping, 
Still, still art thou dear. 
TRAVELING —THEN AND NOW. 
"Farewell! farewell ! we may never see 
you more;” and with tears and embraces a fath¬ 
er and mother parted with one of their elder 
children, a daughter, just married and about to 
emigrate. The young couple took their de¬ 
parture in a covered lumber wagon, from a lit¬ 
tle New England town, and wended their way 
over hill and dale'toward the setting sun. Af¬ 
ter three days’, traveling they reached the east 
bank of the Hudson, and after some delays 
were ferried across in a horse boat; that is to 
say, a ferry-boat propelled by horses walking 
on a horizontal wheel, connected by rude gear¬ 
ing to the paddles. Albany was at that time, 
a small city, compared with what it is to-day. 
The canal was finished and in operation in its 
primitive capacity, it is true; but its advan¬ 
tages had yet scarcely begun to be developed, 
and as to railroads, such a thing had not been 
thought of. It is true, some strange rumors 
had come across the Atlantic, that one Ste¬ 
phenson, an Englishman, an erratic genius, per¬ 
haps a hair-brained enthusiast, was at work 
upon a steam v/agon; and it was stated that 
some members of the British Parliament had 
been foolish enough to introduce the subject in¬ 
to the House of Commons, where it was laugh¬ 
ed to scorn, as it deserved to be; but as to an 
iron track, even for a single mile in this coun¬ 
ty, why the thing was so utterly out of question 
that any man would be in danger of an insane 
asylum, (if there had been any such inexistence 
at the time,) who mentioned it 
Two weeks from the time our emigrants left 
Albany they had reached that little remote 
village, on the lake frontier, known by the name 
of Buffalo; a place not iu very good repute, 
and more famous for the pecuniary ruin of most 
of those who had previously been so foolish 
as to meddle with it than for anything else.— 
’[’lie charred and desolate traces of the confla¬ 
gration, which years before had left Buffalo a 
smoking ruin, because the British officers who 
crossed the frontier were brutes, and the Amer¬ 
ican officers who commanded and were expect¬ 
ed to defend the place were cowards, could still 
be seen. Here emigrants, who a few years 
previously went West, by way of Clean and 
the Allegany river, now began to congregate, 
and to venture over the blue waters o^Lake 
Erie, in sail vessels of very small dimen&dn.#— 
But our travelers had a wagon and horses— 
very inconvenient freight for those skittish and 
doubtful craft, which the chopping surges of 
the iake tossed about like corks—so they took 
their onward and slow march up the lakes 
along the south shore. After a toilsome jour¬ 
ney of three weeks more, they reached the an¬ 
cient city of Detroit, a place much too French¬ 
ified and uncouth to suit their Puritanical and 
Yankee tastes. So after a brief sojourn, of a 
day or so, they made still further progress 
Westward, and settled in the midst of the 
woods and prairies iu Central Michigan. There 
were no neighbors, no markets, no cash, no 
schools, no churches; and many a time in the 
earlier years of their sojourn in the wilderness, 
were they tempted to turn back. But pride 
and poverty prevented, and they did what they 
then deemed to be the next best thing, viz., set 
about improving the lands on which they 
squatted; built a comfortable log house and 
barn, let into the forest the light of day, and 
planted garden and fruit seeds. Letters were 
a month coming and going from home, and cost 
forty miles private conveyance to Detroit and 
twenty-five cents postage at that. 
Things are not now as they were then.— 
Those early emigrants are in years scarcely 
yet past the meridian of life, and find them¬ 
selves now located in the very middle of a 
wealthy and powerful State. They have all 
the comforts and luxuries of life, and enjoy in 
abundance, all those things of which they were 
so destitute at the beginning. There is not 
only a continuous iron track from their own 
door to Boston and New York, a distance of 
more than a thousand miles, but it extends al¬ 
so to the Mississippi river, five hundred miles 
further westward, towards the setting sun. It 
cost them eight weeks painful traveling from 
the old homestead, in the first instance, and 
last year they went back with all ease and com¬ 
fort within a period of two days, to see the old 
folks still alive, although well striken in years. 
The old people think their home among the 
hills of New England is the next best place to 
Paradise; and they were greatly scandalized to 
hear their bluff Wolverine of a son-in-law 
declare that he would not swap his four hun¬ 
dred acres of Michigan land for every rod of 
the old State. He is one of the “ squatter sov 
ereigns” under the ordinance of 1787. 
[Written for Moore’s Rural New-Yorker.] 
HOMER, THE EPIC POET. 
Toe sweetest and purest strains of poetry 
come floating to us across the abyss of time, 
struck from the melodious lyre of the “ blind 
old man of Ohio’s rocky isle.” We call him 
old when the mildness of enduring spring still 
garlands fresh chaplets around his brow. He 
is still with us, still speaks to us in language as 
truthful and enchanting as years ago, when the 
precepts of wisdom distilled from his lips, as 
honey from the honey-comb, and being mould¬ 
ed into harmonious verse, enlightened and re¬ 
fined the age. 
He was the first of those great and noble 
souls who evolved civilization out of barbarism, 
who tore the shackles of vice and error from 
humanity, and opened to its view a vista mag¬ 
nificent in appearance and beautiful in truth. 
His poetry, as fresh and vigorous as the pro¬ 
ductions of to-day, excites our feelings, inten¬ 
sifies our passions, and purifies our hearts. It 
infuses into us a new spirit, a love of the beau¬ 
tiful and good. We are delighted with the 
simplicity of the scenes there presented, the ad¬ 
mirable skill by which each is made to act his 
part in the living drama, the marked delinea¬ 
tions of human character, revealing- every sen¬ 
timent and thought, every motive and desire. 
The waves of his imagination, at times, lave 
the boundaries of that dark sea by which his 
hero knelt, and looking far over the gloomy 
waters, invoked, in language tender and pa¬ 
thetic, the spirit of his sainted mother. Again, 
his fancy vividly paints, in rainbow hues, im¬ 
ages, the bright ideals of a land fairer than 
Hesperian climes. 
He is all youthfulness and love. He comes 
forth as radiant in beauty as his own rosy-fin¬ 
gered Aurora. To him, nature in all her variety 
is enchanting. He lives in her glowing beau¬ 
ties, and is refreshed by her soothing pleasures. 
He inhales the freshness of early dawn—drinks 
in the cool dew of the morning—basks smil¬ 
ingly in the noontide blaze—welcomes grace¬ 
fully the evening twilight—loves the stillness 
and solemn grandeur of night a. j. e. 
A REMARKABLE MAN. 
At a temperance meeting held in Alabama, 
about six years ago, Col. Lemanousky, who 
had been 23 years in the army of Napoleon 
Bonaparte, addressed the meeting. He arose 
before the audience, tall, erect and vigorous, 
with a glow of health upon his cheek, and said: 
“You see before you a man 70 years old.— 
I have fought two hundred battles, have four¬ 
teen wounds on my body, have lived thirty days 
on horse flesh, with the bark of trees for my 
bread, snow and ice for my drink, the canopy 
of heaven for my covering, without stockings 
or shoes on my leet, and only a few rags of 
clothing! In the deserts of Egypt I have 
marched for days with a burning sun upon my 
naked liead; feet blistered in the scorching- 
sand, and with eyes, nostrils and mouth filled 
with dust—and with a thirst so tormenting 
that 1 have opened the veins of my arms and 
sucknd my own blood. Do you ask me howH 
have survived all these horrors? I answer, 
that under the providence of God, I owe my 
preservarion, my health and vigor, to this fact, 
that-1 never drank a drop of spirituous liquor 
in my life! And, continued he, Baron Larry, 
chief of the medical staff of the French Army, 
has stated as a fact, that ,the 6,000 survivors, 
who had safely returned from Egypt, were all 
of them men who had abstained from ardent 
spirits.” 
A Beautiful Conceit.— Some author, we 
remember not who, informs us how we became 
indebted for the red rose. They were all of a 
pure and spotless white when in Eden they 
first spread out their leaves to the morning sun¬ 
light of creation. Eve, as she gazed upon that 
tintless gem, could not suppress her admiration 
ot its beauty, but stooped down and imprinted 
a warm kiss on its snowy bosom. The rose 
stole the scarlet tinge from her velvet lips, and 
yet wears it 
ALMANACS,—THEIR ORIGIN. 
It is scarcely worth while to do more than 
to give a bare notice of the existence of instru¬ 
ments answering some of the purposes of 
modern almanacs amongst the ancient Egyp¬ 
tians. The first of these, however, which can 
truly be recognized as calendars, were the 
Log Almanacs of the Saxons, so-called Al- 
mon-aght, or observations on all the moons.— 
These were square pieces of wood, horn, and 
sometimes metal, about a foot in length, and 
two inches in diameter, on the fore-sides of 
which were graven the golden numbers, do¬ 
minical letters, and enacts of the different Sun¬ 
days in each quarter of the year. Beyond this 
they professed nothing, and were mostly of ex¬ 
tremely rude workmanship. These appear to 
have existed as early as the present century, 
and are believed to have had an Eastern ori¬ 
gin. Several such are still to be seen in the 
British Museum, St. John’s College, Cam¬ 
bridge, and in the Ashmolean Museum. 
Following on these, though after a consider¬ 
able lapse ol time, came the early written al¬ 
manacs; these were of two descriptions,—the 
ecclesiastical, which seems to have been of the 
greatest antiquity, and were to be found added 
to most of the Latin manuscripts of the Scrip¬ 
tures; and also the astronomical. The former 
contained lists of saints’ days, festivals, and 
other matters of religious interest; the latter 
comprised nothing beyond certain astronomi¬ 
cal computations. 
Of these written calendars, perhaps the most 
interesting, as well as the most ancient, were 
the “folding-almanacs,” of which there are a 
number still to be seen, in a fine state of pres¬ 
ervation, in the British and Oxford Museums. 
Some are in Latin; but others again, dating in 
the middle of the fifteenth century, are in En¬ 
glish. Not a few of these compositions were 
of an astrological nature, and amongst them 
may be instanced one by the famous Roger 
Bacon, and another by the not less notorious 
Dr. Lee. 
In the year 1472, the first printed almanac 
made its appearance on the Continent, pre¬ 
pared by one Johannes de Monte-Regio. From 
Germany and Holland these almanacs found 
their way into France, whence, in the year 
1497, one of them was translated into English, 
and printed in this country. The first of . the 
kind, by Richard Pynson, under the title of 
“The Sheapeheard’s Kalendar.” The contents 
of these printed almanacs were very miscella¬ 
neous, and not unfrequently quite beside the 
nature of the publication; but, in every case, 
mixed with the grossest absurdities. Great 
pretensions were made to prognosticate the 
changes of the weather in certain phases of the 
moon; indeed, this astrological branch of the 
information appears always to have been a 
very prominent feature in them. Of the qual¬ 
ity of these predictions and pretended calcula¬ 
tions, the reader may form some opinion by a 
perusal of the following lines, taken from one 
of these almanacs of the “good old time:” 
“Some hot, some colde, some moypt, some dry; 
If three be good, foure be worst at the most. 
Salurne is highest and coldest, being lull old, 
And Mars with his Wuddye sword, ever ready to kylL 
Jupiter very good, and Venus maketh lovers glad. 
Sol and Luna is half-good and half-ille. 
Mercury is good and evil verily. 
And hereafter shalt thou know, 
Whvche of the seven most worthy be, 
And who reigneth hye and who a-lowe; 
Of every planet’s propertie, 
Wbyche is the best among them nil. 
That causeth wrathe, sorrowe or sinne; 
Tarry and heare soone thou shalt. 
Speak softe, for now I beginne.” 
In some of the almanacs of the sixteenth 
century may be found the original of the well- 
known rhymes on the number of days in each 
month. They appear slightly different from 
our modern version: 
“April, June, and September, 
Thirty daies have, as November; 
Each month also does never vary, 
From thirty-one, save February, 
Which twenty-eight doth still confine, 
Save on Leap-yeare, then twenty-nine.” 
It may be perhaps unknown to many of our 
readers, that the nursery rhymes beginning_ 
“ Multiplication is my vexation,” first appeared 
in one ot the early almanacs, so long since, in¬ 
deed, as the middle of the sixteenth century. 
FLOWERS AND MUSIC. 
Yes, two gifts God has bestowed upon us, 
that have in themselves no guilty trait, and 
show an essential divineness. Music is one of 
these, which seems as if it were never born of 
earth, but lingers with us from the gates of 
heaven; music, which breathes over the gross, 
or sad, or doubting heart, to inspire it with a 
consciousness of its own mysterious affinities, 
and to touch the chords of its unsuspected, un¬ 
developed life. And the other gift is that of 
Flowers, which, though born of earth, we may 
well believe, if any thing of earthly soil grows 
in the higher realm—if any of its methods are 
continued, if any of its forms are identical, they 
will live on the banks of the River of Life. 
Flowers! that in our gladness and in our 
sorrow are never incongruous—always appro¬ 
priate. Appropriate in the church, as expres¬ 
sive of its purest and most social themes, and 
blending their sweetness with the incense of 
prayer. Appropriate in the joy of the mar¬ 
riage hour, in the loneliness of the sick room, 
and crowning with prophecy the foreheads of 
the dead. They give completeness to the as¬ 
sociations of childhood,' and are appropriate 
even by the side of old age, strangely as their 
freshness contrasts with wrinkles and gray 
hairs; for still they are suggestive, they are 
symbolical of the soul’s perpetual youth, the 
inward blossom of immortality, the amaranth 
crown. In their presence we feel that the body 
shall go forth as a winged seed. 
The best part of human qualities is the ten¬ 
derness and delicacy of feeling in little matters, 
the desire to soothe and please others—rninu- 
tiae of the social virtues. Some ridicule these 
feminine attributes, which are left out of many 
men’s natures; but I have known the brave, 
the intellectual, the eloquent, to possess these 
gentle qualities; the braggart, the weak, never! 
Benevolence and feeling ennoble the most tri- 
flling actions. 
llltltt. 
CONDUCTED BY A-E. 
Craits-^tlantir -Cjistks, 
TO COUSIN KATEY. 
Communicated thro’ Tdoove’s Rural New-Yorker. 
EPLSTLE THIRD. 
Tirlemokt, Belgium, Jan., 1854. 
Table manners indicative of good or bad breeding— 
National characteristics—Tablo manners and customs in 
Belgium—Belgian hotel fare—“ Pistols and coffee”—Roast¬ 
ed larks, and other luxuries—Dining leisurely—Beer and 
wine at supper—The Belgians nut a handsome people, and 
the reason why. 
Cousin Katey:— Do you remember what 
our dear, good teacher used to tell us when we 
were school-girls together, in her lectures on 
etiquette, that a person’s behavior at table af¬ 
forded the best criterion for judging whether 
he were well bred, or deficient in refinement 
and politeness? I begin to think this princi¬ 
ple i3 susceptible of a still wider application, 
and that the way to become acquainted with 
the character and habits of a nation is to ob¬ 
serve the people who compose it at table,—to 
notice the dishes which they prefer, the man¬ 
ner in which they are served and eaten, the 
beverages with which they are accompanied, 
&c. For example, what could be more sug¬ 
gestive of the rosy-faced, corpulent, sturdy 
Englishman than the ample round of roast 
beef and the generous plum-pudding in which 
he especially delights? Across the Channel we 
find the lithe, mercurial Frenchman, an em¬ 
bodiment of the sparkling wines and fragrant 
Mocha over which he loves to linger; and his 
neighbor, the phlegmatic, metaphysical Ger¬ 
man, whose philosophy is as cloudy and intan¬ 
gible as the fumes of the pipe which is his in¬ 
separable companion, while his physical or¬ 
ganization is equally indicative of the strong 
potations and the heavy dishes which he par¬ 
ticularly affects. To apply the principle in 
question to our own land—if we wished to il¬ 
lustrate to a stranger in the most forcible man¬ 
ner possible some of the peculiar characteris¬ 
tics of “ Young America what better way 
could we devise than to show him our business 
men at table, their minds wholly absorbed in 
some commercial scheme, mechanically bolting 
their dinner in ten minutes, and then hurrying 
away with brows knit and fevered brain to the 
ledger and the counting room? Would not 
the observer at once recognise a nation in haste 
to be rich, ready to sacrifice health and even 
mental and moral improvement at the shrine of 
gain or of ambition? Would he require any 
stronger evidence that we are a fast people?_ 
But I will reserve the further expansion of my 
theory till another time, and proceed to give 
you some account of table manners and cus¬ 
toms in Belgium. 
We arrived here with the famous appetites 
that a sea-voyage usually gives, were accom¬ 
modated with pleasant, airy rooms at the 
“ Hotel du Plat J’ Etain,” (who would sup¬ 
pose this formidable looking name meant noth¬ 
ing more than the Hotel of the Tin Plate?)_ 
and contented ourselves with a simple lunch 
for that night, as the evening was already con¬ 
siderably advanced. By the way, I must not 
forgqt to tell you that the apartment we occu¬ 
pied was the identical one in which Nopoleon 
once passed a day during his consulship. The 
shade of the unfortunate prisoner of St Hele¬ 
na did not return to trouble our repose, and the 
next morning found us refreshed by our slumbers, 
and prepared to do fail justice to all the good 
things that a Belgian hotel might afford. When 
the gar con brought us the welcome intelligence 
that our morning meal was prepared, we de¬ 
scended the stairs with visions of beefsteak, 
broiled chickens, buck-wheat cakes, and the 
other savory dishes which compose an Ameri¬ 
can breakfast floating before our imagination, 
but when we entered the “ salle a manger ” 
these images vanished as if by magic. The 
table displayed simply a coffee service, half a 
dozen rolls, and a plate of butter. We seated 
ourselves somewhat discoucerted, but the ex¬ 
cellent coffee, the rolls and butter, so delight¬ 
fully fresh and sweet, soon appeased us, and 
before we rose we were disposed to regard a 
Belgian breakfast quite favorably. The coffee 
is made after the French mode; the delicate 
flavor which depends on the presence of the 
volatile oils of the berry, and so much of which 
is lost by evaporation in our own stupid way 
of preparing the beverage, is here preserved in 
its highest perfection. The rolls bear the mur¬ 
derous name of pistols, because they were 
originally made long and narrow, and bore some 
fancied resemblance to that weapon. They 
have lost the shape, being now quite ordinary 
in their appearance, but they still retain the 
name, so that your peaceable cousin can say 
i with truth that she was treated to “ coffee and 
pistols” for her first Belgian breakfast. 
Our morning meal was so little in accordance 
with our anticipations that we did not indulge 
in any conjectures respecting dinner, but pre¬ 
pared ourselves to submit with the best grace 
possible to whatever Belgian custom might 
dictate. We found the table nicely arranged, 
with linen beautifully white and clean, and 
in great profusion; each napkin was a small 
table cloth in itself, being not less than a yard 
square. A decanter of water, two salt-cellers, 
one filled with salt, the other with pepper, and 
a piece of bread for each person, were all the 
visible signs of dinner which presented them¬ 
selves, but by the time our enormous napkins 
were unfolded and arranged, the waiter had 
served us each with a plate of excellent soup, 
very different from many of the soups at our 
American hotels, which seem only intended as 
a medium for conveying a certain quantity of 
pepper into the stomach. Next came fish, 
then roast beef with potatoes, then several 
courses of meats unaccompanied by vegetables 
of any kind, and lastly a fowl with a dish of 
stewed apple. This constitutes about the 
ordinary routine of a “ table d’ hote” at a Bel¬ 
gian hotel, modified occasionally by the intro¬ 
duction of the dishes peculiar to each season. 
I must describe to you, cousin Katey, one of 
the dishes which is considered a great delicacy 
here, and which, when in season, takes the place 
of poultry. It consists of larks, roasted whole, 
without removing head, claws or interior, as 
the French delicately express it, and the birds 
are entirely consumed, bones and all, with the 
exception of the beak. An amateur will dis¬ 
pose of six or eight of them in this manner, 
leaving only so many beaks to tell the story. 
The head is considered a particularly desirable 
morsel, and is frequently recommended by phy¬ 
sicians to invalids. How, think you, would 
one of our delicate American girls regard her 
medical attendant if he should propose to her 
such a dish? But to return to my dinner, 
which I left under way. 
The dessert consists of tarts about the size 
of one’s palm, an endless variety of little cakes, 
confectionary, and the fruits and nuts of the 
season. The plates are changed with every 
course, the knife and fork only for the dessert. 
By the way, the use of the knife is confined 
within very narrow limits by the laws of eti¬ 
quette. When you have received a portion of 
meat you are expected to take your knife and 
at once divide it all into the proper morsels; 
after this the knife must be laid down by the 
side of plate, and must remain untouched until 
you are again served with meat. The dishes 
which compose each course are first placed 
upon the table that you may see what you are 
to have, and then the gaicon removes them to 
a .side table to be carved. In this way bills 
of fare are rendered unnecessary, inasmuch as 
you are not allowed the liberty of making a 
selection, but must sit out each course whether 
vou choose to partake of the dishes which com¬ 
pose it or not. An American is at once struck 
whith the absence of that hurry and confusion 
wich attend all dinners at our hotels. Every 
ofte seems to be at his leisure, even the garcon 
moves with a certain dignity, as if impressed 
with the importance of the occasion. Between 
the courses there is necessarily an interval of 
five or ten minutes to allolv time for the per¬ 
formance of all the ceremonies which must be 
gone through, but no one seems impatient.— 
Dinner is apparently the great event of the day, 
and an hour and st half is not considered too 
long a time to devote to it, even by travelers 
and business men. After dinner the gentlemen 
frequently adjourn to the cafe, and spend an 
hour in trifling over a cup of coffee and a cigar. 
Supper, which is usually taken about seven 
o’clock, is only a second edition of the dinner, 
somewhat condensed and abridged. Beer or 
wine is the universal beverage at this meal as 
well as at dinner. Tea is kept at the hotels for 
the accommodation of the English who are 
frequent guests, but a Belgian servant girl 
would feel herself abused if her mistress should 
give her tea instead of beer at supper. Be¬ 
sides the three principal meals very many of 
the Belgians, particularly the laboring classes, 
take a lunch at four o’clock, which they call the 
gouter or taste it consists of coffee and tartines 
or thin slices ot bread and butter, arranged like 
sandwiches, minus the ham. All the servants 
in a house expect this meal as much as their 
dinner, whether the members of the family take 
anything at that time or not 
There, Katey, I have given you a faithful, 
and I fear a tiresome account of all the partic¬ 
ulars connected with eating ami drinking here. 
Do you observe the preponderance of animal 
food, and the constant use of stimulating bev¬ 
erages, particularly coffee and beer? Then you 
will not be surprised to learn that the Belgians* 
are a dark, heavy looking race, with little vi¬ 
vacity or intelligence. Even the children seem 
prematurely old, and almost every man we 
meet past middle age totters along as if he had 
one foot already in the grave. I have scarcely 
seen a pretty woman since I came here, while 
I can not go into the street without encounter¬ 
ing scores of toothless old crones who could 
auy of them personify Shakespeare’s witches to 
the life. Entre nous, I entertain serious fears 
that I shall grow ugly myself from the mere 
force of association. Minnie. 
Home ! there is music in the word! It falls 
on the weary heart like a breath from the 
Eden-land, and as our hearts feel a thrill of its 
voiceless melody the Future’s sky before us 
seems lit by an angel smile. 
