NEWS CURIOSITIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 263, 5 November 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

NEWS CURIOSITIES.

JOTTINGS FROM WORLD'S PRESS,

The goose and its fabled golden eggs " have nothing on" Mrs. Charlie Yue s gold-digging ducks. With a keen eye for business, Mrs. Yue, a daughter of faacramerito, raises ducks in a Placer County ravine once worked by gold miners. As a result, she finds a little gold in the craw of nearly every duck killed in the market.

Jacob Lieberman, of Yonkers, New York State, has just had his sight restored after twenty years. He was asked what pleased him most to be able to see again. Hie blue of the sky, the flowers in the parks, pictures, skyscrapers, and the thousand and one things that make life what it is, but Jacob astonished his questioner with the homely reply: "The happiest thing I can see is my wife."

Time was when parents in Belgrade could look upon their daughters as sources of revenue. Every time one of them married, bang came £SO to the family. Now, however, a conference of parents has agreed that £50 is too high a figure to pay in these distressing times. Too many daughters are remaining unmarried! It is hoped, I suppose, that "cut prices ' will result in bride-booms!

* After lying idle and waterless for a scoro of years, an old canal in Newark, New Jersey, is again to be used for carrying passengers. This will not be done by filling it with water and reviving the historic boats and mules. The canal will be widened, and into it'will be directed more modern torrents —streams of loaded trolley cars, whose passengers will be taken to a new Pennsylvania station.

" In the stream where you least expect it there will always- be a fish," said the poet Ovid, speaking of fortune. Now read: " A worn-out cushion used by some Paris boys as a football split open, and notes to the value of £1100 fell out. A letter received by a Zagreb firm was returned unopened because it looked like a begging letter. Actually, it was an order for goods, and its return has resulted in a loss to the firm of £1000 profit." Again to quote Ovid: " Luck affects everything. Let your hook always be cast."

A gravedigger charged with a minor offence has just given a Budapest judge the shock of his life. This is how. The judge: I find you guilty and fine you 3/4. The gravedigger: Then four men must die. The judge: You threaten me with death. I'll have you gaoled! The gravedigger: I am not threatening death. The judge: Then what on earth? The gravedigger: My fees are lOd a grave, and until tour people die and I get the order for their graves I cannot pay the fine. The judge: The fine is remitted —in case fate will have it that I help you to pay!

This is how the popular American paying " Let Smith walk " originated:—-J. • occupant of a room in an American J, ° was kept awake by his next room l ° P hour, who passed his room K loudly. Finally he knocked ; the ooor and asked what . jrl afflicted person explained verv creat trouble. -ti . , nuv 100,000 dollars, . nnc '^ aS , """g that all? w"YI "°to sleep it is' Smith's job to do the waTking." Hence arose the proverb " Let Smith walk. i