Jasper Banner, Volume 4, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1857 — MARKET PRICE OF HUMAN LIFE. [ARTICLE]

MARKET PRICE OF HUMAN LIFE.

The most precious thing a man i possesses is never set down in the ! inventory, and he have nothing but | that, he is accounted miserably poor. There is nothing upon earth to which he clings so tenaciously and yet nothing which lie subjects to : such eminent risks, as Life. i He compels his stomach to do all , rnanneivof unreasonable service, ! and then blames it for breaking | down under the imposition, j He uses his eyes for reading Agi ate by candle light, or writing with i abominable blue ink^—the dickens take the blue ink !—upon blue pa- ; per—his eyes that were made to admire earth, sea, sky. and everything that in them is; except “ pot-hooks 1 and hangers,” and then baptizes them in Thompson’s Eye Water, or some other form of tincture of fire, audibly grumbling the while, because they persist in shedding tears ■ at his folly, or draw the*curtains of - the cataract over their much .abused windows. And so in one way and another, J he make? wanton attacks upon the citadel of Life, destroying the outworks, knocking to pieces the battlements, keeping a corps of Sappers and Miners incessantly busy, and ; takes" anomalous pleasure during lUD Hi pci 1q 11 Hi ICiHiig iIOAV TuUy Ir it is able to endure, which is in other words, how much better Nature is to him than he is to himself. The value of human Life, like the ; wares of the green grocer, suffers-j strange fluctuations, hut unlike j them, the greater the demand the , less the price. Men have patiently j suffered themselves to be ehot at all day long for a shilling, and come as- ; ter a while like Frederick the Great, j to love the small song of the flying : bullet, when the same men would j run a steeple chase to keep out of the way of an irritable Yellow Jacket. People used to go about beating other’s brains with clubs—

threshers of men —upon the obsolete supposition that when the the brains were out, a man would die ; the excellent Hottentots had a way of assisting their grand-moth-er’s off with the knapsack of life, ! while! the delicate Polynesians serve j nfp clergyman sometimes as great dinners. ! :;f Life thep has a very uncertain valuation, and it is a note-worthy fact that the greater the loss, the Jess it is felt. The great knell that rang over the round world from the Crimea, became at last not half so sad ? as the slow tolling of the village bell that marks the passing of a single soul. Were anybody to ask ns what is the grand characteristic of the present age, and we should answer “ off hand " the reply would be : thetendeijcy of everything to be the Active of everything to be summed up in its melancholy participle, “ gone." lluttian Life is looked upon as a sort of Steam Engine, and the pressure to which it can be subjected wlithout explosion, precisely gfadu-

I ates its value. To fire up ”in the J morning, and keep it glowing and, going till the “Tallis Evening Hymn ” is sung for the last time, is the problem that everybody just nnu‘ is busy in solving. The route 'of motiou seems of far les3 conse-j quenoft than the rate; and tho.only thing Galileo would be arraigned for in these days, would be that be whiY | pored “ the world moves,” instead of I speaking it out good and strong like a man. The human heart is hollowed offt t into a blast furnace,.and the brain ! set lb boiling like the withes’ cauldron whose burden forever is—- “ Toil and trouble, . < J Fire burn and cauldron bubble." j | The very willows that droop over the tomb of Memory are cut up for fuel'to feed this hungry engine-r and to be “ ou time ” is the great end ; ahd aim of creation, j The whole world is being laid with new track ; The old flat bars displac--ed foTT rail—T rail to fame, T rail to fortune, T rail to glory and T rail | to the grave. Smalt engines are put up everywhere, and the shafting is adjusted to run presses and pulpits, poets and politicians, ploughing and praying. » . No matter who runs off the track, or what breaks, everybody stands with “ Time Table ” in hand, to see whether they will make up the minutes.they have lost in clearing away the wreck and picking up the dead. Even disease itself feels the whip and spur of this great New Market, and consumption, that jogged along through twenty years “ old style,” is picked up into a dashing gallop today. Collisions of interest, shipwrecks of ,faith, and explosions of projects have consequently grown ‘‘familiar aa household words insurance offices have multiplied and their rates advanced to a living figure. But to return to the play of these pulses of ours ; the small tick of the machinery, the physician lays his still following the fashion, just to see at what rate we are going ; the value of Life has depreciated because of the risks it incurs. Tossed about like unfortunate dice, in railroad cars, nobody can positively tell whether it will come upon “ ace ” or go at once to the *• dnee.” The tendency of everybody is to fly, and it must be confessed that machinists engineers are doing everything in their power to facilitate I this Icarian ambition to be winged, and the result of it all is, that we are nearer anywhere, everywhere and nowhere than our forefathers ever dreamed »f being ; and what is 1 more, one is not quite sure to which of the vvheres he id certainly going ; he pays his fare hut sometimes keeps on to a Station or a port where no ticket called for, and no check need be kept in sight. He gaily says, ‘‘good-bye till to-mor-, { row.” or “ I will nee you next week,” as he darts over the gang | plank or swings himself up on the | tops of the ear, and he finds himself;’ ' clinging to a rope, over the side, . trailed like a- shark’s hait in the wa + t ter, or he looses himself altogether, among the debris of iron wheels,] j and ponderous axles that snapped off as brittle as pjjpe stems.

i And he, as much as anybody, is to blame for all this. Forever in a hurry, he fairly begrudged the locomotive its morsel of wood and draught of water and thought little about a collision while he chafed under a necessary detention. As long as he could count the fence lengths, he fancied himself motionless; | while the “ mile poets ” only glitterled by him like a white railing, he was impatient to get out and go across lpte. If he takes passage on a steamboat, he is watching the plunge of the shaft, or he is inquiring how many pounds more to a square inch the boilers would possibly endure; or he rushes to the stern of the boat and fancies he sees some craft or other ,trying to catch him; or he looks'' over, the side, and sees the white wings of a gull flicker by, while he thinks to himself “how much like a snail we are going.” ... Everybody from Railroad President and Steamer’s Captain down to f second engineer and stoker has bwsilj doing his best to please him, and* now he finds himself astrid- r ‘“j unsaddled hen-coop, r- * A a lii along a failroad * ,■**’ distributed pleased at p”, f ‘ ra< *> ar *d he is not: But 4 r . - I ‘His matted fi not one that

| will abide jest; if be will net valoa bia own life and loses it, there is no penalty out of Ireland that can | rcpcb him, where as the story goes, it was once proposed to punish the crime of suicide by hanging. But ns ive have already taken occasion to saytthere is a responsibility and n reward nonmthrrc, and this great crime of depreciating the value of human life should be charged home upon aomdkxly. Carelessness involving the loss of life is a crime ; want of means to render everything what human wisdom would suggest is a crime ; lack of skill in case of emergency is a crime. | If a wheel so not properly tested, j and it breaks, and lives are the cost of the fracture, then he whose duty it was to make that test should be* arraigned to answer. If a steamer j is covered with boats as thickly as a Surinam toad with its progeny, and the sun has looked them into seives, or they cannot be lowered without peril, or there is nobody to man them, then this neglect is criminal, and the life that may have been washed out by waves or rendered up in an offering by fire, calls from the sea and from the air. We have in this no direct refer-■ ence to the recent calamity, whereby men were left like Logan, the last of his race, or swept away to uncoffined graves, but to the poor estimate almost everywhere set Upon Human life, as manifest in the imperfect link, the defective axle, the rattling rivet and the reckless haste; as manifest, too, in the habit of thought that in the same breath that cal’a the roll of the dead can sigh, “ loss, three hundred thousand dollars, and no insurance! ” t t A Ngcro not Allowed ro Sit at a Republican's Table. —A negro row recently occurred at the Franklin I House, in Canton Ohio. A colored individual, who bad taken a seat at the dinner table, was requested to vacate, but refused, when the landlord and his assistants used force, ejected the ‘‘Black Republican/* The Canton Dctnocrat says: The remark made by the darkey, after the ejectment was served on | him, was quite interesting. He said if this was Republicanism, to drive a man from a dinner table provided for the j>ublic,hewanted no more of it. He reminded our Republican friend, Ellison, the landlord, that he electioneered with him last fall at his coal pits to use his influence for “General” Fremont. CCJ 3 A letter from Marbourg,under date of May 26, published in the Gazette cT Augsbcrurg, says: “The marriage ring of Martin Luther has been found. It is a plain ring, ornamented with across and the instruments of our Saviour,s passion in •rubies. On the outward side is the following inscription :D. Martino Lnlhcro Catharina a Bora.” ECr’The gentle man Who attempt!ed to cut his throat with a sharp joke a few days since, has again made a rash attack upon his “victualing departmeUt/’by stabbing himself with a point of honor. A fine stone church was lately built in Missouri, upon the front of which a stone-cutter was ordered to cut the following as an inscription: “My house shall be called a house of prayer.” He was referred, for accord acy, to the verse of Scripture fft which these words occur ; but, unfajUj'" tunately, to the scandal of the society, he transcribed the whole verse “My house shall be called a house of prayer, but ye have madia it a den of thieves,”

! A fat man undertook the task of teasing an eccentric preacher- “ Bo you believe,” he said, “in the story of the Prodigal Son and the Fatten Calf?” “Yes,” said the preacher, “ well, then, was it a male or female calf that was killed?” “A ferhSflte,* promptly replied the divine. “ How do you know that?” "Because ( looking the interrogator steadily in the, face) 1 seethe male is alive now-” In the Coifti at' Special Session this morning, t& man pamed Smith uas arraigned for stealing John containing three jratloia at ’ whisky. you gdilßff cW guilty?” asked the clerk. “W«B you can call it what yhfaiike | the whisky, that l admit, and drinked It too.” “ You toS«feMfel*£ did you hot?.. “ Inover wjut to b© t asked when that articled round.”— N. Y. Post. *