The small engine constructed by Mr. Barnum for this purpose, is well adapted to its place, and has several peculiarities whereby the valves, and consequent reciprocal motion of the engine are regulated without the use of a crank or fly-wheel: but of these we cannot at present give a minute description. The whole of this apparatus evinces much scientific ability of the inventor, Daniel Barnum, Esq., resident at present in this city, and who has received many certificates from the first scientific men in the Union, in commendation of his invention.
A proud porker, fancying that it was degrading to his dignity to root in the gutter, came upon the sidewalk, and full of his consequence, promenaded from morning till night, leaving his humbler companions to munch corn, husks and potatoe parings. He fared as people usually do, who from vanity assume a station they are not qualified to fill. In the gutter he would have lived in unnoticed enjoyment. On the walk he got kicked by every passenger and bitten by every cur, till hungry and bruised he was glad to return to his proper station.--[Ex, paper.
The proprietors of the cotton mill in Schuylerville, N. Y., who reduced the wages of their hands, a week or two since, says the Schuylerville Herald, twenty-five per cent., are now, and have been for several days, endeavoring to induce them to return to their work, at the old wages; but they are too late, as most of them are engaged to work in other mills.
A man in Orange county was found one night climbing an over-shot wheel in a fulling mill. He was asked what he was doing. He said he was 'trying to go up to bed, but some how or other these stairs won't hold still.' There are many unlucky wights who are laboriously endeavoring to climb fortune's ladder on the same principle.
An amusing incident recently occurred at Williams College, which is thus related by a correspondent of the Springfield Gazette:
The professor of chemistry, while administering, in the course of his lectures, the protoxide of nitrogen, or, as it is commonly called, laughing gas, in order to ascertain how great an influence the imagination had in producing the effects consequent on respiring it, secretly filled the India rubber gas-bag with common air instead of gas. It was taken without suspicion, and the effects, if anything, were more powerful than upon those who had really breathed the pure gas. One complained that it produced nausea and dizziness, another immediately manifested pugilistic propensities, and before he could be restrained, tore in pieces the coat of one of the bystanders, while the third exclaimed, 'this is life. I never enjoyed it before.' The laughter that followed the exposure of this gaseous trick may be imagined.