Twelve Years’ Military Adventures.

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THE HEIR.

Persons who are very rich, and have no legal heirs, may entertain themselves very much at the expense of hungry expectants and lean legacy-hunters.  Who has not seen a poor dog standing on his hind legs, and bobbing up and down after a bone scarcely worth picking, with which some mischief-loving varlet has tantalized the poor animal till all its limbs have ached?  That poor dog shadows out the legacy-hunter or possible heir.

Rank and Talent.

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The author of “The Journal of a Naturalist,” just published, relates the following incident that occurred a few years past at a lime-kiln, (on the old Bristol Road) because it manifests how perfectly insensible the human frame may be to pains and afflictions in peculiar circumstances; and that which would be torture if endured in general, may be experienced at other times without any sense of suffering.  A travelling man one winter’s evening laid himself down upon the platform of a lime-kiln, placing his feet, probably numbed with cold, upon the heap of stones newly put on to burn through the night.  Sleep overcame him in this situation; the fire gradually rising and increasing until it ignited the stones upon which his feet were placed.  Lulled by the warmth, he still slept; and though the fire increased until it burned one foot (which probably was extended over a vent hole) and part of the leg, above the ankle, entirely off, consuming that part so effectually, that no fragment of it was ever discovered; the wretched being slept on! and in this state was found by the kiln-man in the morning.  Insensible to any pain, and ignorant of his misfortune, he attempted to rise and pursue his journey, but missing his shoe, requested to have it found; and when he was raised, putting his burnt limb to the ground to support his body, the extremity of his leg-bone, the tibia, crumbled into fragments, having been calcined into lime.  Still he expressed no sense of pain, and probably experienced none, from the gradual operation of the fire and his own torpidity during the hours his foot was consuming.  This poor drover survived his misfortunes in the hospital about a fortnight; but the fire having extended to other parts of his body, recovery was hopeless.

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GAMING.

Gambling, the besetting sin of the indolent in many countries, is ruinously general throughout South America.  In England, and other European states, it is pretty much limited to the unemployed of the upper classes, who furnish a never-ending supply of dupes to knavery.  In South America the passion taints all ages, both sexes, and every rank.  The dregs of society yield to the fascination as blindly as the high-born and