Bound the Sanctums.

Otago Witness, Issue 1584, 1 April 1882, Page 29

Bound the Sanctums.

Angel Children.

•Yes, there are such children in the world,' says St. Clair, in « Uncle Tom's Cabin ' ; 'but we only find their names written upon gravestones.' • He was speaking of Eva, the little heroine of the book, the lustre of whose pure young life has been shed upon a million nomes, and whose gentle deeds and sayings are as familiar to all of us as household words.

There is something infinitely sad as well as inexpressibly beautiful about the lives of many v little ones whom heaven has apparently claimed \for its own even while they are vet with us. *' %ut of their innocent, deep eyes shines a light which was not born upon land or sea, and, like shells holding the echoes of the ocean, their souls are thrilled by a lingering music which sounds in perfect fulness upon the further shore. Such children always die ; but they live long enough to teach us something about immortality, and make us think of the life beyond the grave. Buds of humanity, they are gathered by the Angel of Death, and we know that they shall bloom in heaven !

About the tombs of little children beautiful thoughts cluster like blossoms. It is better that their tender feet have never trod life's rugged road ; that their lips have never uttered words of pain and passion ; that their souls should flutter back to the shelter of eternity unstained by selfishness, unhurt by wrong. ' And so, those who gaze with unutterable regret upon some little shoe, or empty cradlo, or broken and neglected plaything, may find consolation in remembering thai their children like imprisoned birds, have simply broken away through the bars of a dreary world. And they may shape their prayer in the worcjs of

Dickens, standing at the death-bed of Paul Dombey : ' * Oh I look upon us, angels of young children, with regards not quite estranged, when the swift river bears us to the ocean !' Stature of Different Races of Men. In comparing races as to their stature, we concern ourselves not with the ordinary tallest or shortest men of each tribe, but with their ordinary or average sized men, who may be taken as fair representatives of their whole tribe. The difference of general stature is well shown where a tall and short people come together in one district. Thus, in Australia the average English colonist of five feet eight inches looks clear over the heads of the five feet four inch Chinese labourers. Still more in Sweden does the Swede of five feet seven inches tower above the stunted Lapps, whose average measure is not much over the five feet. Amongst the tallest of mankind are the Patagonians, who seemed a race of giants to the Europeans who first watched them striding along their cliffs draped in their skin cloaks ; it was even declared that the heads of Magalhaen's men hardly reached the waist of the first Patagonian they met. Modern travellers find, on measuring them^ that they really often ! reach six feet four inches, their mean height being about five feet eleven inches— three or four inches taller than the average Englishman. The shortest of mankind are the Bushmen and related tribes of South Africa, with an average height not far exceeding four feet three inches. A fair contrast between the tallest and shortest races of mankind is afforded when a Patagonian is drawn side by side with a Bushman, whqse head only reaches to his breast. Thus, the tallest race of man is less than one-fourth higher than the shortest, a fact which seems surprising to those not used to measurements,

BXorphomanla : A New Horror Inadvertently Created by Science. When physicians discovered that pain could be subdued by inserting under the skin a small pointed instrument provided with a tube containing morphia, they little thought that they were paving the way for a new vice. Yet so it was. There are in our merry England beings who are as wholly under the domination of morphia as ever was Chinese under that of opium. Women have yielded by degrees to its fatal fascination, until at last they prick the skin a dozen times a day with the tiny syringe that has such terrible results. The operation is almost painless, the immediate effects pleaI aant. A delicious langour supervenes. Happy t thoughts and bright imaginations fill the mind. Some see beautiful visions, others feel only a pervading sensation of comfort and well-being. On a few the effect of morphia is to excite to some intellectual effort, if effort that can be called which is pure delight, a glorious feeling of untrammeled power or uncrippled exercise of the highest faculties. It is as though the mind had suddenly developed wings. But at the very height of the enchantment the influence of morphia begins to Bubside. The glory fades. The wings trail, and the feet that are their sorry substitutes become weightened as with .lead. As with the workers, so with the dreamers. The visions are obscured. The sensation of comfort gives place to one of discomfort, irritation— even pain. The mental I vision that had just now looked through a rosy mist sees all things as through a crape veil or a November fog. Can it be wondered at that the dose is renewed, that the poison is absorbed again and again, that' the intervals become shorter and shorter between the reign of the potent drug? And the end ? The punishment is terrible indeed. By degrees the mind becomes darkened. Hideous hallucinations seize upon it. Self-crontrol is lost. Imbecility overtakes the weak; madness threatens the strong. These are the personal consequences. There are others to be bequeathed to sons and daughters and later generations. These can be ! guessed at. The new vice has not reigned sufficiently long for the world to have seen them exemplified, but a dark array of possibilities suggests itself only too readily. The heritage of insanity, inebriety, of infelicity, with its future to be traced back to those tiny tubes which hold only a drop or two, and to which men once looked as the blessed means of relieving pain, forgetting that blessings and curses go hand in hand in a crooked world. Dipsomania has now a powerful rival, speedier in its results than its own revolting process, and eventually as degrading. The name of the lattsr-born sister fiend is Morphomania. — London Truth. The Banjo Boom. There is good reason for believing that the heretofore despised banjo is to be elevated to the first rank as a musical instrument. Some one has discovered that it is of very ancient origin, and of course that is much in its favour, as many persons delight in anything associated with antiquity. A relic hunter in Egypt found, or says that he found, in the tomb of a royal family, in one of the oldest pyramids, a banjo of the exact form of those played by plantation darkies. In his opinion the ancient Pharaohs delighted in the sweet sounds produced by the banjo, which constituted the favourite music of the country which has been called the cradle of civilisation. It is easy to account for the introduction of the banjo into this country. It was brought by the negroes from Egypt by; way of Ethiopia. Many people will now admire the banjo who despised it when it was thought to be the invention of some negro barbarian. Indeed, it is stated very aristocratic people, as well as many accomplished musicians, have long been pleased with the banjo, and that the latter have played it 'on the sly. 5 Lord Dunraven, of England, is said to be an accomplished banjo-player. Thalberg, the great pianist, Miss Nilsson, and Clara Louise Kellogg, the opera singers, are also enthusiastic lovers of the ancient Egyptian instruments. A London musical instrument- | maker states that he cannot supply the demand for the fashionable rival of the piano. — Washington Capital. Dread of Death. Age, that lessons our enjoyment of life, increases our desire for living. Those dangers which, in the vigour of youth, we had learned to despise, assume new terrors as we grow old. Our caution increasing as our years increase, fear at las* becomes the prevailing passion of the mind, and the small remainder of this life is taken up in useless efforts to keep off our end, or provide for _ a continued existence. Whence, then, is this increased love of life which grows upon us as with our years? Whence comes it that we should make greater efforts to preserve our existence at a time when it becomes scarce worth the keeping? It is that Nature, attractive to the preservation of mankind, increases our wish to live, while she lessons our enjoyment ; and, as she_ robs the senses of every pleasure, equips imagination in the spoil. Life would be insupportable to the old man who, loaded with infirmities, feared death no more than when in the vigour of manhood ; the numberless calamities of decaying nature, and the consciousness of surviving every pleasure, would at once induce him with Ws own hand to te.rniißa.tp tha scene of mjsory ;

but happily the contempt of death forsakes him at a time when it could only be prejudicial, and life acquires an imaginary vaUiem proportion as its real value is no more.— Goldsmith.