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third year, when a river burst its banks, and deluged and destroyed nearly all that neighborhood. Absolute want now stared them in the face, and in the mere dread of it the daughter sickened and died. The second son, Fanpi by name, resolved to seek a living elsewhere, as others were doing; and his parents and elder brother reluctantly consented to his departure. Fanpi embarked in a junk, which carried him to Singapore, where he landed as poor as it was possible for him to be. He was, however, an industrious, persevering, ingenious young man, and he soon obtained plenty of work, and the means of improving himself in mechanical skill. Although he never rose to a higher station than that of packing-case maker to the English merchants and shippers, he, in time, be- | came possessed of a comfortable house and of a considerable sum of money besides, which he left to accumulate in the hands of the worthy merchant who was his chief employer.

Being thus comparatively affluent, Fanpi married a woman of the country, a young, well-favored Malay, who had lived in service with a European family at Singapore, and had there acquired some general notions of Christianity. Fanpi continued to thrive until he had three children, and three thousand hard Spanish dollars of his

own.

He had many friends in the colony, and only one known enemy. This was a Fokien man, who came from a seaport town not far from Fanpi's district. He might have done well at Singapore; but he was an idle, worthless fellow, constantly getting into scrapes and difficulties. On one occasion, to relieve him from his embarrassments, Fanpi generously lent him a hundred dollars; but instead of making a proper use of the money, the Fokien man gambled it away at cock-fights and quail-fights, and in those horrible dens, the opium smoking houses. This money squandered, he repeatedly applied for another loan, and was very properly refused. Exasperated at the denial, he one night, when drunk and mad with the fumes of the opium pipe, violently assulted Fanpi in the streets, vowing that he was unmindful of his country, that he was no true man of Fokien, and that he would have his life. The police interfered; and as the fellow had made himself notorious by his vicious conduct and turbulent disposition, he was turned out of the colony a few days after

ward, with a significant hint that if he ever returned he might expect to be hanged.

Fanpi, during all this time, had rarely, if ever, had the opportunity of communicating with his parents, or of receiving any news from them; but about this period, a Fokien junk arrived, having on board several emigrants from his native district. From these people he learned that his elder brother was dead, and that his now aged father and mother were in great distress and want. Many fabulous virtues have been attributed to the Chinese; but, generally, their warm filial affection has not been exaggerated. Every true Chinaman holds it to be a sacred duty, not only to honor his father and mother, but to toil for them, and support them when they can no longer work for themselves. Fanpi, accordingly, told his Malay wife that he must return to the home of his fathers. She hesitated not a moment in saying that she would go with him, and take her children. He plainly apprised her that there would be danger, or at least the risk of danger, in so doing; since, by the laws of China, foreign women were prohibited from setting foot on the soil of the Celestial Empire. The affectionate wife, however, declared that she had no fear; that life, indeed, would be insupportable without her husband and children. Fanpi, therefore, who loved her well, and who could not bear the idea of leaving either wife or children behind him, although with his means he could have left them in a condition of comfort or even of prosperity, resolutely took a cheerful view of the whole matter.

"The laws of the empire," he said, "prohibit, under pain of death, all emigration, and yet my countrymen emigrate by thousands at a time; the same laws and the same penalty stand against the introduction of foreign women; and yet Chinese do return to their own country, and take foreign wives with them, and are allowed to be at peace. Once free of the seaport, we shall do well in my own district, which is too poor to feed a single mandarin; none will question or molest us there. I will redeem the mortgage which presses on our patrimonial acres; I will purchase more land, and hire my poorer neighbors to till it; we shall thrive, I trust, even in that district; and I shall have the satisfaction of succoring my father and mother, of closing their eyes, of interring them among our ancestors, of dying on the spot

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where I was born, and of being buried by | found quiet and convenient lodgings in the the side of my parents."

Thus reasoned Fanpi with himself, as he engaged passage room in a return junk for himself, wife, and children. And all, no doubt, would have gone well and as he wished, had it not been for the malice and revenge of that wicked, debauched, opiumsmoking man of Fokien.

Dressed as people of the country, and putting themselves in a boat which mixed with a shoal of other shore boats, Fanpi and his family, without being challenged or noticed, landed at the seaport, and easily

inner part of the populous town, where everybody was too busy or too much occupied with his own pleasures to bestow a thought upon them. But the day after their arrival, as Fanpi was going down to the port to see to the landing of some goods which he had left in the junk, he encountered the Fokien man who had vowed his destruction. The fellow at once geve him in charge to a mandarin of the lowest grade, who exercised the functions of a police officer, alleging, in a loud voice, that Fanpi was a most desperate character,

who had not only broken the laws by emigrating, but who had been also actively engaged as a pirate; and then finished his charge by whispering in the mandarin's ear that his prisoner was very rich.

The last accusation was the most fatal of all to poor Fanpi. He was carried to the house of the chief mandarin, being followed by his accuser. This great officer and administrator of justice was neither better nor worse than the majority of Chi- | nese mandarins. In the absence of any evidence, except that of a man who had made himself notorious here, as he had done at Singapore, and who at the moment was intoxicated, he would have imposed some slight fine upon the returned emigrant, and have let him go ; but the opiumsmoker swore that Fanpi possessed the enormous sum of 30,000 dollars; and it would have been against all precedent, as well as against his own nature and official habits, for the sordid minister of justice to let such a prize escape toll-free. He ruled and ordered that Fanpi should be thrown into prison, and bastinadoed on the morrow, to extort a confession of his guilt.

The arrest made little or no noise in the town, being a matter of such common occurrence; but, happily, the news reached the Malay wife as she was wondering at Fanpi's long absence. Being naturally a shrewd woman, and having learned much during her service at Singapore, Mrs. Fanpi went quietly and cautiously to work, and, first of all, she hid the bags which contained her husband's money in the garden of the house where they had procured lodging. She then made inquiries of the people of the house, and of some of the most respectable of their neighbors, as to the character of the chief mandarin. They said that he was much like all other mandarins, excessively venal and rapacious, and apt to be very cruel where he could not attain his ends by gentler means. But they all spoke with affection, respect, and almost reverence, of the mandarin's wife, who was well known by her gentleness, her acts of charity, and especially by her dispensing of healing Frangi medicines to the afflicted poor.

From the last circumstance, the Malay wife concluded that the lady must have had friendship with some of the European or American missionaries. "If," thought she," the mandarin's wife knows the virtue of those foreign drugs, she may know VOL. XI.-34

something of the precepts of the foreign books." To those whom she had consulted, she said, "I will try and see this lady." "You cannot do better," said they; "for her influence over her husband is great, and has often turned him from evil-doing."

So, taking one of her children in each hand, and bidding the eldest of the three to follow her, the Malay stranger went to the mandarin's house, and, seating herself under a verandah, patiently waited in the outer court until a female servant passed by. She then rose, gave the woman a small gold ring, and implored her to tell her mistress that a distressed stranger, a wife and mother, from a far-distant land, had a prayer and petition to put up to her.

In a very brief space of time, the poor Malay and her children were admitted into the inner garden of the house, and conducted to a pleasant detached pavilion, which overhung an artificial lake. In this quiet apartment was the lady, and no other person. She was young, very handsome, and had a most benevolent countenance. All this was encouraging; and what was yet more so, was a little book of devotion which she held in her hand, and which the poor Malay knew to be of the sort distributed by the Christian missionaries. She would have prostrated herself to kiss the lady's feet, but was prevented, and was gently told to relate her misfortunes. While she did this, the lady caressed the children, who at first stood in great awe and fear of her.

Fanpi's wife told her tale well and even eloquently, as people mostly do when they speak from the heart. Having insisted that her husband was an upright and honest man, without offense or blame, except that, like so many others, he had emigrated to avoid starvation, and had returned to succor his starving parents, she said: "If the law be against me, let me suffer, but let my husband go free; for what could I do but follow my husband wherever he might go? Lady, make the case your own! Would you not rather brave danger than be parted from your husband and children?"

The tears stood in the lady's eyes, and a redness came to her pale cheek, as she said, "I would rather face sudden death than do it."

She then inquired what money Fanpi might really have brought back with him, well knowing that the mandarin's greed must, in some measure, be satisfied.

The first impulse of the Malay was to state that they had only three hundred dollars; but the lady's tone and manner, and a something working in her own bosom, made her declare the true sum-three thousand dollars.

"You are sure you tell me the truth," said the lady; "but do you know what truth is ?"

"It is little known among my countrymen or countrywomen," said the Malay.

"Or among mine,” sighed the lady.

"But," resumed the Malay, "I have learned something of truth from the distributers of books like that which you hold in your hand."

"Ah!" said the lady, "is it so? Then am I more than ever disposed to serve you. My lord is a kind husband to me; he is not a bad man, but he is a mandarin. Something you will have to pay on these three thousand crowns; but fear not for the rest of your treasure, or for your husband's liberty and safety, or for your own. These old laws are infringed every day, and no one knows it better than the master of this house. Wait here while I go speak with him."

She was not gone long, although it seemed a very long time to the impatient wife. On her return, she re-entered the pavilion with a smiling countenance, and said: "Stranger, be comforted; all has gone well; that wicked opium-smoker shall rue his malice, and Fanpi shall go forth from the prison not very much the worse for having been in it. Keep the children silent, and follow me.

She led her into the presence of her husband, who received her more courteously than she believed he would, and directed her to tell him the truth, and how much money her husband really possessed. She told him her sorrowing tale, which so much impressed him that he ordered Fanpi's liberation, and immediately had the Fokien man arrested, whom he had severely whipped, and afterward cast into prison.

THE COPPERAS WORKS OF VERMONT.

HE sulphate of iron is used very ex

tensively in manufactures, especially in dying black, making ink, and also in medicine as a tonic. It sometimes goes by the name of green vitriol, but more commonly by that of copperas. The latter name would seem to indicate that copperas was a principal ingredient in it, the word itself properly meaning copperrust. But there is no copper at all in it, The name probably arose from the fact that there are three vitriols, the green, blue, and white, the bases of which respectively are iron, copper, and zinc. The common term for the second became in time a synonym for vitriol, and by one of the strange freaks of language is now confined to the most abundant of the vitriols, the sulphate of iron. The copperas of commerce is obtained principally from iron pyrites, a very abundant mineral, and very easily worked. A great deal of our copperas is manufactured in Great Britain, where it is obtained at a cheap rate, and brought over sometimes as ballast in ships.

The only place in America where this article is at present manufactured is in the town of Strafford, Orange County, Vermont. The deposite is a vast ridge called "Copperas Hill," situated in the southwestern corner of the town, and is apparently inexhaustible. The rock contains, besides sulphuret of iron, considerable quantities of the sulphuret of copper, (from which excellent copper is obtained,) also smoky quartz, hornblende, garnet, etc. The solid rock has a "cop," as the miners call it, of petrified vegetable substances, extending to various depths, and furnishing some curious fossils.

The process of obtaining the copperas is somewhat as follows: The rock is first blasted with powder, great fragments being thus loosened and thrown up. The large pieces are then broken up with sledges and drawn off to convenient places. It is now further broken. Then comes the "sorting," the mineral containing the copperas being thrown into one pile, that con

The mandarin refused to accept anything from Fanpi, and he, with his noble wife, took their leave of their deliverers with feelings of the kindest love and grat-taining the copper into another, while that itude. Fanpi, and Mrs. Fanpi, still live, and both have done good service in propagating the faith among their ignorant friends and relations. Truth, in the end, must always triumph.

which contains neither is wholly rejected. This is attended to by men and boys with small stone hammers, examining the ores carefully, and being themselves examined in turn, as it is a very easy thing to slight

the work. The sulphuret of copper is conveyed away in carts to be smelted, roasted, etc. The sulphuret of iron is pulverized and thrown into large heaps. Water is conveyed to it, and combustion takes place, usually spontaneously by the avidity with which the mineral, when moist, absorbs oxygen from the air; sometimes, however, it is necessary to set it on fire. In this way it burns for several | weeks, a great chemical change being produced, the oxygen of the atmosphere uniting with the sulphur of the mineral forming sulphuric acid, which uniting with the iron forms the sulphate of iron or copperas. Considerable sulphur is driven off during the oxydation, impregnating the air with its peculiar odor sometimes for miles round. I do not know that it is particularly unhealthy, and people soon become accustomed to it, though very unpleasant at first. Formerly the atmosphere was so thoroughly impregnated with sulphur that it destroyed vegetation, and scarcely any green thing grew in the immediate vicinity; but I learn that the combustion is at present allowed to proceed more naturally and moderately, and the unpleasant odor is in consequence very much diminished.

At the cessation of the combustion the heaps consist of crude sulphate of iron, mixed, of course, with many impurities. This salt, however, is soluble in water, and hence is now subjected to the leaching process. Springs abound all over the hill; the water is easily conveyed to the heaps, and, percolating through every part, carries along with it the substance sought. The liquor thus obtained is collected in spouts and gutters, and conveyed to reservoirs near the "factories," large buildings provided with all the facilities for evaporation. On the way to the factories there are some very simple and efficient arrangements to induce a natural evaporation. These consist of several tall wooden frames, each supporting several galleries of brush, so situated, the declivity of the hill favoring it, that the liquor can be conveyed to the top of the frames and made to pass over and through all the galleries of brush, and thus to cover a large surface exposed to the action of the atmosphere, and to present itself at the factories in a much more concentrated condition than it otherwise would. The apparatus in the factories for

evaporation consists of large shallow lead boilers set in fire ranges or arches, (as they are sometimes called,) and coolers or crystallizers of the same material. The reason why lead is used is because it is the available metal which will withstand the action of the liquid. A moderate fire is kept up under the boiler till the liquor reaches the proper consistency, when it is drawn off into the coolers, where the sulphate crystallizes and is separated from the liquor, the latter being pumped back to undergo further evaporation. The salt attaches itself to the sides and bottom of the cooler, and also to sundry wooden slats which are let down from joists resting on top of the vat. crystals when first formed are of a beautiful sea-green color, and in the shape of delicate rhomboidal prisms. The color and shape, however, soon become changed by exposure to the air.

The

I am not positively informed as to the time when this deposit first began to be worked, but I think it was more than fifty years ago. It was discovered by accident. Some of the farmers engaged in the rude process of manufacturing maple sugar, saw, where a sap trough had been overturned, an appearance of fire, the moisture having produced spontaneous combustion in the slight pulverization on the top of the rock, resulting in a vitriol-like formation. The attention of scientific men was called to the spot. The nature of the deposit was ascertained, and the manufacture soon after commenced by individual enterprise. The business, however, was not very profitable till taken hold of by some gentlemen in Boston and a company formed. Great improvements have been made from time to time, so that at present the same amount of copperas can be obtained by the labor of ten or fifteen hands as was formerly produced by forty or fifty. For the last few years from twelve to fifteen hundred tons have been made annually. The supply is apparently inexhaustible, and if there were no other deposit in the world, this would probably be all-sufficient for ages to come.

The copper mine is now worked to some profit, though when first commenced it was a losing operation. Both the copperas and copper works are under the superintendence of John Reynolds, Esq., to whom I am indebted for information respecting the subject of this paper.

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