Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/427

 9* s. viii. NOV. 23, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

419

VII.

A thousand pretty ways we '11 think upon To mock our separation- Alas ! ten thousand will not do,

My heart will thus no longer stay, No longer 'twill be kept from you,

But knocks against the breast to get away.

VIII.

And when no art affords me help or ease, I seek with verse my griefs t' appease ; Just as a bird that flies about,

And beats itself against the cage, Finding at last no passage out,

It sits and sings, and so o'ercomes its rage.

I cannot help thinking that so fine a poem as this well deserves to be rescued from oblivion, though it is not altogether free from the faults of its school and time. It is evidently the work of no common versifier, but by one who had at least a spark of in- spiration in him. I do not at the moment remember any poem on the same subject which is superior to it, excepting Vaughan's fine verses beginning

They are all gone into the world of light, And I alone am here.

BERTRAM DOBELL.

THE HALFPENNY PERIODICAL POST. I have recently had the pleasure of a visit from a valued friend, who after nearly fifty years' absence in America revisited his English fatherland. The Rev. Henry S. Olubb, the minister of the Bible Christian Church in Philadelphia, has had an interesting career. He was born at Colchester in 1827, and early became one of the disciples of Sir Isaac Pitman in the beautiful art of phonography. He was closely associated with the foundation of the Vegetarian Society in 1847, and was the first editor of the Vegetarian Messenger. In 1853 he emigrated to the United States, where he was one of Horace Greeley's assistants on the New York Tribune. He settled in Michigan, where he was elected to the State Senate. During the War of the Secession he served as a quartermaster, with the rank of captain, in the Federal army. For the last twenty-five years he has been the minister of the Bible Christian Church in Philadelphia. From his pen came the earliest proposal known to me of the halfpenny post.

In the number of the Vegetarian Advocate for 15 December, 1848, Mr. Clubb suggested a halfpenny stamp for the transmission of small periodicals by post. The price of the great newspapers was then 4d. and 5d. per copy, and the charge of Id. for the postage did not seem disproportionate, but for papers like Chambers' s Journal, the Cottage Gardener, and other periodicals published at a lower

price the cost of transmission was absurdly excessive. Three numbers of the Peoples Journal, costing 4d, had to pay 3d. in postage. Newspapers costing Is. 3d. went for the same amount. " We would therefore humbly suggest that every periodical, the price of which does not exceed 2d, should be privileged with free postage by means of a stamp marked ' One Halfpenny.' " Such were the words of Mr. Clubb ; and his proposal was based on the great principle that the diffu- sion of knowledge is useful to the com- munity, and that the " silent civilizers of mankind " would thus find entrance into many districts from which they had been so far for the most part excluded. The British nation pondered over the subject for more than twenty years, and in 1870 reached the conclusion to which Mr. Clubb had attained in 1848. WILLIAM E. A. AXON.

Manchester.

" MATE," PARAGUAY TEA. In his valuable 'Notes on English Etymology,' 1901, Prof. Skeat gives a list of English words of Peru- vian origin, alpaca, condor, guano, llama, pam- pas, fmma, quinine, &c., but he omits the im- portant term mate (Paraguay tea, Jesuits' tea). It is the more needful to draw atten- tion to this omission, since the 'Century Dictionary,' our best authority till the 'N.E.D.' is completed, absurdly calls mate Spanish. It is, however, the same word which so early as 1608 appears in Gonzalez Holguin's Peruvian dictionary under the spelling rtiati, defined as " Vaso 6 platos de calabaza, para bever 6 comer." From mean- ing the calabash out of which the liquor was drunk, it has come to be applied to the decoction itself. A movement was started a few years ago to introduce mate* here in London as a rival to China tea, but I presume it was unsuccessful, as I have heard nothing of it lately. JAMES PLATT, Jun.

MARRIAGE SAVING FROM EXECUTION. Augustus J. C. Hare, in his 'Story of my Life,' vol. v. p. 442, says that on 26 October, 1884, he was told the following by Lady Waterford. During the noyades in 1794 two beautiful girls were tied together to be drowned, when a poissarde asked if no young men were there who would save such beauties by marrying them. Two young men came forward and were married to the girls on the spot. One of the young men was an English- man named Longworth, who became by this marriage the father of the well-known Theresa Longworth. But there seem to be difficulties about accepting all the story. In 1854 Theresa was a young woman, and could