days under water on the first occasion. But these examples fade into insignificance before the strange case of Laurence Jones, whose funeral sermon the learned Burmann had listened to. According to the preacher, Jones, when sixteen years old, fell into the water and remained there for seven weeks, but recovered, and lived to be seventy. Even Dr. Jackson is a little doubtful of the accuracy of these figures, though why, he asks, should the learned Burmann misrepresent the words of the preacher, and why should the preacher tell a lie?1 It is easy to laugh at such stories, but after all their moral was a good one. The hasty inference that a man is dead because he has stopped breathing had cost the world a countless number of valuable lives, and needed drastic correction. A little hyperbole could do no harm. It may be added that for a long time the true cause of death by drowning was not understood. A venerable instance of this misapprehension occurs in the Anglo-Saxon epic of Beowulf. There the hero takes a long dive to the bottom of a haunted pool and enters a subaqueous hall, where he performs a very valorous exploit. As soon as he enters the hall, he is quite at his ease. The water, we are told, could not get in to injure him. Here is the gist of the whole matter. The theory was that a man was drowned because the water did him some harm rather than because he had nothing to breathe. Hence the efficacy of the "bladder" that formed before the mouth of the fisherman whom Dr. Jackson tells of. Even the eminent physicist Boyle was in doubt "whether an animal in an exhausted receiver dies for want of air, or because of the compression of the lungs" and in 1665 suggested an experiment to discover the facts.2 And the Royal Society entertained the idea that "a kind of new air" made by the "operation of 1 Jackson, pp. 7, 10, 11, 15-16. 2 Birch, History of the Royal Society, II, 31. distilled vinegar upon the powder of oister-shells" might be "convenient for respiration" and afford a means of breathing under water.1 In 1794 the Massachusetts Magazine printed a letter, dated January, 1789, from a member of the Humane Society which suggested an extension of the method of resuscitation then practised to cases of apparent death by cold. The writer had found that apples might be preserved by frost and had seen potatoes ploughed up in the spring "which had lain all winter in the ground, and were as sound and good, though frequently frozen, as those that were dug in the fall of the year." A snake too, he said, might "freeze so hard and stiff that it will break like a pipe-stem" and yet would come to life again. He likewise appealed to the hibernation of swallows, which were believed to spend the winter at the bottom of ponds, either frozen or buried in the mud, and to emerge in the spring.2 Some days before, the writer had seen the bodies of "eight or ten stout men, frozen hard as rocks," and the melancholy spectacle set him thinking. He ventured to suggest that it might not be amiss to disinter one of the bodies and endeavor to resuscitate it. His proposals came to nothing, but they remain as a record of the speculative activity of men's minds at the end of the eighteenth century, a disposition to which the world owes much. 1 Birch, History of the Royal Society, II, 25, 26. 2 See a paper on this phenomenon in the Memoirs of the American Academy, 1785, I, 494. 3 Massachusetts Magazine for January, 1794, VI, 23-25. HUSKINGS AND OTHER AMUSEMENTS A DMIRAL BARTHOLOMEW JAMES of the Royal Navy, during his excursion on the Kennebec River, in 1791, when he was a captain in the merchant service, had the good fortune to be present at a husking at Vassalborough, which he briefly but appreciatively describes in his entertaining journal: -" During our stay at this place we saw and partook of the ceremony of husking corn, a kind of 'harvest home' in England, with the additional amusement of kissing the girls whenever they met with a red corn-cob, and to which is added dancing, singing, and moderate drinking."1 The admiral was fond of diversion and had a penchant for eccentric merrymaking. After he had retired from active service, and when he was enjoying his leisure as a country gentleman, he is said to have entertained the poor of the vicinity with a feast at which the chief dish was a sea-pie of Gargantuan proportions. Mr. Thomas, however, was a practical farmer. He was not averse to seasonable amusement, but he detested waste, and he was always suspicious of any combination of work and play. Here are some of the precepts in his Farmer's Calendar: Harvest your Indian corn, unless you intend it for the squirrels. If you make a husking, keep an old man between every two boys, else your husking will turn out a losing: (October, 1805.) 1 Journal of Rear-Admiral Bartholomew James, Navy Records Society, 1896, p. 193. Come, Dolly, my dear, spur up; prepare something good and cheering, for we will have a husking to-night. (November, 1806.) In a husking there is some fun and frolick, but on the whole, it hardly pays the way; for they will not husk clean, since many go more for the sport than to do any real good. (October, 1808.) Husking is now a business for us all. If you make what some call a Bee, it will be necessary to keep an eye on the boys, or you may have to husk over again the whole heap. (October, 1816.) Some years later, in 1828, when the brief agricultural maxims of the Farmer's Calendar had expanded into character sketches and little didactic essays, we find a more elaborate confession of faith on the subject of the New England harvest-home: "Come, wife, let us make a husking," said Uncle Pettyworth. "No, no," replied the prudent woman, "you and the boys will be able to husk out our little heap without the trouble, the waste and expense of a husking frolick. The girls and I will lend a hand, and all together will make it but a short job." Now, had the foolish man took the advice of his provident wife, how much better would it have turned out for him? But the boys sat in, and the girls sat in, and his own inclinations sat in, and all besetting him at once he was persuaded into the unnecessary measure, and a husking was determined upon. Then one of the boys was soon mounted upon the colt with a jug on each side, pacing off to 'Squire Hookem's store for four gallons of whiskey. The others were sent to give the invitations. The mother being obliged to yield, with her daughters went about preparing the supper. Great was the gathering at night round the little corn stack. Capt. Husky, old Busky, Tom Bluenose and about twenty good-for-nothing boys began the operations. Red ears and smutty, new rum and slack-jaw was the business of the evening. (October, 1828.) "Red ears and smutty" are fully treated in Joel Barlow's Hasty Pudding, which was written in the winter of 1792-93 and contains the classic passage on husking parties : The days grow short; but though the falling sun With each smut ear he smuts the luckless swains; She walks the round, and culls one favored beau, And he that gets the last ear wins the day. This is one of the few passages of eighteenth-century American verse still remembered. Barlow's ambitious and unreadable epic, the Columbiad, is as dead as Blackmore's Prince Arthur or Southey's Madoc; but the mockheroic Hasty Pudding, which he must have regarded as merely an elegant trifle, "the perfume and suppliance of a minute," is often quoted and even finds a reader now and |