The girls and women think of our wives,
      The men dislike our bray,
   And throw us pence for lack of sense,
      If we'll only go away.
        'Tis money we seek, 'tis money we'll have,
           If we howl till all is blue;
        Money for 'baccy, and money for gin;
          WE DON'T want work to do.

   Success to gammon and false pretence,
      Success to the Barley Mow,
   And may never the world be less of an ass
      Than we all of us find it now!
  'Tis well to work if there's no escape,
     'Tis better to cadge and crawl;
   So throw us the coppers as fast as you can,
      Good people, one and all!
         For 'tis money we seek, 'tis money we'll have,
            If we howl till all is blue;
        Money for baccy, and money for gin;
           WE DON'T want work to do.

              APPARENT DEATH.

VERY lately, the present writer was
requested to attend, on a Monday morning,
the funeral of a lady sixty-seven years of
age, the wife of the mayor of a small
French town, who had died in the night
between the Thursday and the Friday
previous. On the company assembling,
the curé informed us that the body would
remain where it was for awhile, but that
the usual ceremonies (except those at the
cemetery) would be proceeded with all the
same. We therefore followed him to the
church, and had a funeral service without
a burial. It transpired that the body was
still quite warm, and presented no signs of
decomposition.

In the ordinary course of things, this
circumstance might not have prevented the
interment; but the poor lady herself had
requested not to be buried until decomposition
should have begun beyond the possibility
of mistake; and the family remembered,
and regretted, that her brother had
been put into the ground, three days after
his death, while still warm, and with his
countenance unchanged. They had
occasionally felt uneasy about the matter, fearing
that they might have been too
precipitate in their proceedings. So in this
case they resolved to take no irrevocable
step without the full assurance of
being justified in doing so. The corpse
was kept uninterred long after every doubt
was set at rest. Certainly we manage
some things better in England than in
France; amongst them being the interval
allowed to elapse between death and
interment. Still, there are circumstances
and cases which, even here, afford matter
for serious reflection.

It will easily be supposed that the
dangerous briefness of this interval has been
urged upon the attention of the French
Legislature, and been ably discussed by
the French medical press. In 1866, a petition
was presented to the Senate from a
person named De Cornol, pointing out the
danger of hasty interments, and suggesting
the measures he thought requisite to avoid
terrible consequences. Amongst other
things, he prayed that the space of twenty-
four hours between the decease and the
interment now prescribed by the law should
be extended to eight-and-forty hours. A
long debate followed, in which Cardinal
Donnet, Archbishop of Bordeaux, took a
leading part. He was decidedly of opinion
that the petition should not be set aside by
the "order of the day," but that it should
be transmitted to the minister of the interior
for further consideration and inquiry.
Some of the venerable prelate's remarks
produced so great an effect on his auditors
as to merit particular mention. He said
he had the very best reasons for believing
that the victims of hasty interments were
more numerous than people supposed. He
considered the regulations on this head
prescribed by the law as very judicious, but
unfortunately they were not always executed
as they should be, nor was sufficient importance
attached to them. In the village
where he was stationed as assistant curate
in the first period of his sacerdotal life, he
saved two persons from being buried
alive. The first was an aged man, who
lived twelve hours after the hour fixed for
his interment by the municipal officer.
The second was a man who was quite
restored to life. In both these instances a
trance more prolonged than usual was
taken for actual death.

The next case in his experience occurred
at Bordeaux. A young lady, who bore one
of the most distinguished names in the
department, had passed through what
was believed to be her last agony, and
as, apparently, all was over, the father
and mother were torn away from the
heartrending spectacle. At that moment, as
God willed it, the cardinal happened to
pass the door of the house, when it occurred
to him to call and inquire how the young
lady was going on. When he entered the
room, the nurse, finding the body breathless,
was in the act of covering the face,
and indeed there was every appearance
that life had departed. Somehow or other,
it did not seem so certain to him as to the
bystanders. He resolved to try. He raised
his voice, called loudly upon the young