The Arkansas Banner

Test of Affection.
M. Archibald Stanhope—a groggy sentimentalist, residing in Buckley street, Philadelphia—conceived the harrowing suspicion that his wife was not as passionately fond of him as a lady of good taste should be, and to put the matter to a fair trial, he hit on a little stratagem which he put in practice the other day, with the results hereafter to be detailed.
He took a suit of clothes and composed an effigy of himself, by stuffing the garments with a quantity of straw, which had lately been discharged from an old bed. Having suspended this figure to a rafter in the garret by means of a piece of clothes-line, he ensconced himself behind a pile of rubbish in the same garret, to watch the effect;
After a while, his little daughter came up after a jumping rope, and caught a glimpse of the suspending figure. She ran down the stairs screaming.
"Oh, mother, mother, daddy has hung himself."
"Now for it," thought Archibald in ambuscade; "we shall have a touching scene presently."
"Hung himself?" he heard Mrs. S. repeat as she walked leisurely up stairs, "he hasn't got spunk enough for such a thing, or he would have done it long ago. Well, I believe he has done it, however," she continued, as she came in view of Archibald's straw representative. "Moll," (to the little girl) "I think he ought to be cut down. You had better go into the kitchen and get a knife my dear, but don't go down too fast, or you might fall and hurt yourself. Stay—I forgot—there's no knife in the kitchen sharp enough. You can go around to Mr. Holmes, the shoemaker, in Sixth street, he's only two squares off, and ask him to lend us his paring knife; tell him to whet it a little before he sends it. And Molly, you can stop at the grocery store as you come back, and get a pound of seven cent sugar. Poor Archi!" sighed Mrs. S. when her daughter had departed, "I hope we'll get him down before the vital spark's extinct—for these buryings is very troublesome and cost money. He wanted to put an end to himself, too; and I think I ought to let him have his own way for once in his life, he used to say that I was always a crossing him. I wish he hadn't spoiled that new clothes line—an old rope might have answered his purpose."
Here a voice, which sounded like that of the supposed suicide, broke in on Mrs. Stanhope's soliloquy, with "You confounded Jezabel, I'll be the death of you!"
Mrs. S. thinking this must of course, be a ghostly exclamation, uttered a wild scream, and attempted to escape down the narrow staircase. Archibald, starting from his place of concealment, gave chase. Mrs. S. stumbled midway on the flight of stairs, and Mr. S. having just reached her, and made a grab at her dishevelled hair as it streamed backwards, the amiable partners were precipitated to the bottom together.
Both were rather badly bruised, and the cries of the lady raised the neighborhood. Archibald was arrested for making disturbance, and practising on the tender sensibilities of his wife. He was recognized in Squire, and jocularly proposed his suspended effigy as his surety—but, he found to his sorrow, "straw bail" was not accepted under the administration of Mayor Jones.