FROM FAR AND NEAR.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 3, 3 January 1903, Page 6

FROM FAR AND NEAR.

lA great com-motioii has been caused in: the .neighbourhood ot Auteuil, Paris, awing , to the discovery in the Rue Boileau of a. house for dyingpeople. The house is kept by a rich elderly lady, who passes her time in looking out for people in the last stages of consumption. As soon as she learns from the doctors, who are her ag-ents, that a patient is about to die, she a/pproaches the. relatives with a view to inducing them to allow her to remove the dying , person to her home, which she calls "The House ot the Pious Death." Sere she persuades the patient to die a Christian death by receiving the Sacrament. The result is a procession of cabs, conveying dying , and consumptive people to the villa, and there are funerate all day long. Hundreds of people are re-mov-ing from the neighbourhood as a res suit of this discovery.

At Aberdare County Court recently, when His Honor Judge Gwilyia Williams took his seat, it was noticed he was minus his robes and wig. Before the business commenced he addressed the solicitors as follows:—

"As it is my fault, and as I insist on your robing , , I fine myself ten shillings to be consistent. I shall pay the sum into the poor box." .

Have you ever heard how champagne came to be called "The Boy"? The term was really of Royal origin, and was first used at a picnic party years ago when the King was Prince of Wales. A youth had been told off specially to look after the champagne, and presently, as the calls of "boy" began to grow monotonous, the Prince happened to notice that a very little lady, fresh from school, did not iwem to be thoroughly enjoying herself, so lie asked her if she would like some wine. She blushed, and not knowing or not remembering the name of the favourite, replied that she would like a little of "the boy. ,-

The company at once took it up, •everybody wanted "the boy," and thus a new word was added to the recognised slang of society. .

News from the United States shows that there are prospects of many American negroes going back to Africa, their ancestors' home. Mr D. J. Plummer, agent of the Liberia Colonisation Society of Birmingham, was in the State of Georgia arranging for the sailing from Savannah on January 20th next of 300 negro colonists,for Liberia, the negro State, in West Africa. The steamer Donald of New York has been chartered. He said that all arrangements had been completed, and that nothing remains but to bring the ship Savannah and congregate the passengers.

Writing of the ever-verdant servant question, Max O'Bell says that in France (I do not say in Paris, which, thank Gael, is not France) we have good servants,of both sexes whom we can treat' familiarly, and even as friends, without fear Of their taking any liberty on that account. After a few years they practically form part of the famil- circle. Some of them are even sometimes consulted on family matters. When they are too old to do any more service, they retire on a little pension, which, added to the money they have saved every year from their wages, enables them to live independently and comfortably, either in their little village, or in the neighbourhood of the people they have served so well and who still treat them in their h6use as old, tried friends. In France no servant has ever been known to be in want during the winter of life — no, not only not in want of all necessaries, but of many little luxuries.

You must not think that turkeys first canje from Turkey, for they are natives of America. _ ?Tor that Irish potatoes came from Ireland, for they ars American. And the Turkish bath originated in Russia. Nor must you think camel's hair brushes are made from the hair of the hump-backed quadruped. They are mostly made from the bushy hair from the tails of animals. German silver not only is not silver at all, but it was invented in. China centuries ago, and it is an alloy of some of the inferior metals. Porpoise hide is not made from porpoises at all. Cork legs are not made of cork, and they did not come from Cork. The willow tree usually furnishes material for them. Cleopatra's Needle, that wonderful obelisk of Egypt, was made a thousand years before Cleopatra was born; and really had nothing to do with her. Irish stew is an English dish. Prussian blue, the beautiful colour, is not a special product of Prussia, but of England, And so, you see, we frequently find that our language has names for things that are misfits.

M. Paderewski is highly strung; he is tuned like a piano. Who, indeed, ever knew a musician who wasn't? It is part of their stock-in-trade. He appeared to have been very much annoyed with the good people of Manchester owing to their behaviour at his recital at tie Free Trade Hall this week. Certain of the audience rose in the middle of his performance and casually wandered , about the corridors, opening and shotting swing doors in a highly reprehensible manner. It was too much for M. Paderewski. He stopped the music, glared, ran his hands through his hair, and left the platform, not resuming the recital until the doors had been, permanently closed. But Manchester is not crushed. It has been discovered ■ that the strings of a double bass painted with nitric acid are almost as sensitive as M. Paderewsld. A German scientist discovered that on playing a second double-basswith true Teutonic energy the strings of another so treated broke with a tremendous report. It is not stated what the German scientist hopes to prove by xhis discovery.

Of late years the Queen of England has been so seldom seen on horseback that people have almost forgotten the equestrian feats of her younger days. But as a girl there was no wore accomplished or fearless horsewoman in the kingdom, and neither wind nor rain would keep her away from the meets round Sandrngham, Her Majesty is not so devoted to fishing as her son or daughters, and she insists on alwaya using artificial bait. Her rod is a very magnificent affair, inlaid with gold.

A enrioua story of a wealthy old re.cluse is told by a correspondent in '•Bdusehold Words."

Not a hundred miles from London, and about five xnilea from a railway station, he says, stands a large house in beautiful grounds. Two rooms only in thid house are occupied —one by the owner, and the other by his servant. The staircase is never used, and communication between the two rooms is by a hole in the floor and a rope ladder. The owner's meals, when cooked, are passed up through this hole. The chief peculiarity, however, of this eccentric being is that twice a week, late at night, he conies down his rope ladder dressed as a tramp. He then walks the five miles to the station referred to, where he nas a private room. Here he changes his clothes, emerges in full evening dress, and goes by the last train up to London. It has been ascertained that he then takes a cab to one of tne big clubs in the neighbourhood of Pall Mall. What he does at the club is not known, but he returns by the first (newspaper) train in the morning, when he repairs to his room at the station, puts on the tramp's clothes again, and returns to his house, where he resumes his peculiar mode of life.

He has never been known to speak to anyone in the village, and no one can give a reason for hid quaint behaviour, but local gossip has it that he was jilted as a young man, and vowed that he would never again speak to a woman, nor, aa far as he couid avoid it, look at

one again. The editor of "Household Words" vouches for the veracity of iis correspondent.

How strange are ways <rl the .Celestial! The royal road to official success in China ia still inefficiency and stupidity. According to the "Sin Wen Pao, w a comedy in real life illustrative of this has just been played by the Empress (Dowager, Chu Hung--cM, and the Public Censor.

The latter reported to the Throne that Chu, an official of high standing, was ignorant of all foreign and diplomatic affairs, and quite unfit for office.

The Public Censor, in accordance with his duty, asked that Chu be dismissed.

Chu, satisfied with the justice of the charges, at once resigned. To the surprise of everybody, however, the Empress Dowager issued an Imperial decree declaring him a most exemplary servant. Ghn was reinstated and promoted.

Sensational preachers among us should take a leaf out of the book of a parson in lowa, who has just gone through an interesting experience. This lowa clergyman took the unusual step of playing tramp himself for a day two, and going the round of his congregation. History records that the only meal he got, intermixed with many threats and the slamming i>? many Pharisaic doors, was at a bouae where he was recognised. His charity sermon on the following Sunday was a caution. ■".-.'-

A woman at her best cannot 'be bettered by any one thing in this universe of worlds of which man ever had the blessing of possession. Her inborn capacity for staunch faithiiilness, while enduring all things, fc in itself one of those beauteous mysteries upon which man has got top much in the ha.bit qdt looking with blind eyes. "Dear Bill/ so ran a letter which one of the humourists alleges that he once picked up in the street, "The reason I didn't laff when you laft at me at the post office yesterday was becos I have a bile on my face, and I can't laff. If I laff, she'll burst. But I love you, Bill, bile or no bile, lafE or no laff." And, in the main, that is the spirit in which woman cleaves to man. "Bile or no bile, I love you, Bill." For better or for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, in anguish of mind, in bitterness of soul, in pain and sorrow, in disgrace and discredit, her love is yours. Take your man —test him, try him* prove him for anything 3'ou will. Give me at the last ordeal, when my back is against the wall, the woman, so that if I fall, hers shall be the hand to draw me up again. "What* sir," said Mark Twain, in proposing the toast of "The Ladies," "would the people of all the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir — mighty scarce. Then let tis cherish her—let trs give her our support our encouragement, our sympathy—-ourselves, if we get the chance."

Tin soldiers issue forth, in vast armies of every nation under the sun from the workshops of Nuremberg. Most of them come from Herr Rnpprecht's factory, a modern building of moderate proportions, situated at Furtive small town Nuremberg. Herr Rupprecht employs 180 hands in making tin soldiers, 100 of whom work in their own homes. They are the painters who invest* flic troops with their uniforms of paint according to patterns supplied. This work, is usually undertaken by mothers whose families are too young to be left, by cripples and by others whose time is already partly occupied, From four to twenty ahillinss a week can be earned in this wa.y. The fully-equipped soldiers (says the "Girls' Realm") are brought to the factory in large open baskets, layer upon layer, between sheets of blot-ting-paper. The toy warriors are then counted, entered upon the register, and passed into the packingrooms, in each of which some four or five girls, half-buried in fine paper shavings, lay them out in brightlycoloured boxes. These boxes then receive their distinctive labels and go forth into the world to charm and delight boys and girls of all nations. The actual making of soldiers takes place in a large workshop fitted with several small furnaces, round each of which sit three or four women. In

the left band they hold tightly clasp-

Ed the two halves of the mould or matrix for three or five .soldiers?; dipping a long-handled spoon into the molten mixture of tin and lend, they pour it carefully through a narrow c.perture, shake off the superfluous fluid, then, seizing a knife, I open the matrix and dexterously i extract the soldiers joined together by a traill. They toss th?se aside and start afresh. Ten thousand soldiers iof all ranks, besides tents, rifles, guns, etc., are thus turned out day by day.