and his wife and children. It is possible that
the present confusion in the licensing system
may be quite as instrumental in repressing
the good as in checking the bad. The penny
concert, the penny panoramas, the harmonic
meetings, the banjo-player in a taproom, the
sentimental singer up-stairs, the theatricals in
a saloon all indicate a want, a tendency, a
natural yearning, which may lead to good, if
properly managed.

                         CHIP.

     COAL MIXING ON THE OHIO.

THE first thing to be done after opening a
coal bank—here, where I am working, up the
Ohio river is to fix an inclined plane from the
river to the mouth of the pit. This is made
of wood, and somewhat resembles the planes
in use at the ballast dépôts on the Tyne,
minus the engine. If it be intended to haul
out the coal with mules, a wooden rail-road
is laid from the top of the inclined plane,
throughout the pit. If the diggers bring out
their own coals, oak planks are laid for the
wheels of the cart to run on. Screens are
erected either at the top or bottom of the hill.
The capital required for commencing a
colliery (or coal bank) here, is trifling compared
with what is requisite in England—in fact it
would, in England, hardly give a supper to the
sinkers.

The usual way of beginning to work the
coal is, to drive one or two entries, or
headways, through the substance of the hill, or as
far into it as may be thought necessary.
Booms, or bords, are then turned away on
each side of the entry. Each digger has a
room eight yards wide, parted by walls, two
yards thick, from the rooms adjoining. Each
room is "driven" from fifty to a hundred
yards. Means for promoting ventilation are
never thought of, as the vein is considered
to be quite free from inflammable gases. Few
faults or interruptions occur in our mines, the
only ones that I have seen are clay veins.
They vary from six inches to three feet in
thickness; generally lie in a perpendicular
position, and seldom alter the course of the
vein of coal. The coal itself is of first-rate
quality for household and steam purposes.
The price paid for digging here is a dollar
and three-quarters per one hundred bushels
of separated coal; which is, I believe, the
highest price paid anywhere. In some places
the payment is as low as a dollar and a
quarter.

The digger is expected to buy all his tools,
and to keep them in repair. He must also
sharpen them, the master providing means
for doing so. He must set all his own posts,
or props, and lay the road into his own room.
He must find his own house; and, in most
cases buy his own firecoal. Very often he
must take part of his earnings in store-goods,
sometimes greatly to his disadvantage. The
balance due to him is generally paid when
the running season closes, in summer and
winter. At some banks, when a digger is
about to leave, he has the right to sell his
room. He must not calculate upon getting
more than nine months' work in the year.
Some of these things are not quite to the
taste of men from Durham and
Northumberland.

The coal banks are generally rented of
the owner—half a cent per bushel being the
usual payment here for the right of working.
At some places the coal is leased, at others
the rent is so much for each digger employed.

The produce of the mine is conveyed to
distant markets in flat-bottomed boats, built
expressly for the purpose, they are from a
hundred to a hundred and fifty feet in length,
and about twenty feet in breadth, and are
generally loaded five or six feet deep. Two
of these are lashed together with strong
ropes. At the outside ot each are three oars
and each has a large steering oar at the stern.
Sixteen hands are required, besides the pilot
and cook, to take a pair of boats to Cincinnati,
or Louisville; and, if the freight be destined
for St. Louis, or New Orleans, a still
greater number of men is engaged. These
hands are paid by the trip—sixteen dollars
a-piece, perhaps, to Cincinnati: twenty to
Louisville. The run from Pittsburg to
Cincinnati usually occupies six or eight days.
Coal boating forms a very lucrative business,
although the undertaker (or boss) is liable to
loss, on account of the number of sand-banks
and snags on the river. Fogs, too, are very
common at night. It sometimes happens
that the snag pierces the bottom of the boat,
and, in that case, its own weight breaks it up
in a few minutes, and down go three or four
hundred dollars' worth of fittings. A plurality
of means for obtaining a livelihood is the
great thing in this country, and for any such,
necessity we, North-of-Eugland men, seem to
be little qualified. Some persons here are
seldom without work. In the summer they
will be farming, in the fall coal-digging, in
the winter lumbering, or coal-boating, or
they go clown to the Lower Countries. It is a
common thing for men from these parts to go
down to St. Louis, or thereabouts, and get
three or four months' work in the winter, and
although St. Louis is fourteen or fifteen
hundred miles off, a journey of that distance
counts almost for nothing.

            WEIRD WISDOM.

THERE must have been something
fascinating of old time in the true faith of an
astrologer.

                   Life's fitful gleam,
                   Death's doleful dream,
                   Stars rule, I ween,

said he; and there was a time, very long
since, when he believed what he said very