THROUGH OUR EXCHANGES.

Bruce Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 1750, 18 May 1886, Page 3

THROUGH OUR EXCHANGES.

. » Who will deny that there is still left a shred of romance in real life, even in this matter-of-fact age. Truth is proverbially stranger that fiction, and the high flow sentiment that we find so difficult to digest in the ordinary threevolume novel we swallow with unction when we know it to have actually occurred. The story runs thus : — Three years ago a young, good looking officer, well connected, with close upon £10,000 a year, fell in love with a beautiful and accomplished girl of goodfamily, but in narrow circumstances. She reciprocated bis affection, bnt with a pride that is often moat tenacious in the poorest families, gently but firmly refused his offer. She pursued her study of singing — a passion which, up to tbis time, had with her no rival — while the young soldier sadly embarked in the Malabar to join his regiment in India. A few weeks ago a bronzed and bearded man returned from India, and preferred travelling overland through Europe to going by the usual sea route. He strolled one night into the chief opera house at Dresden, and, recognising in the the leading soprano the only woman he had ever loved, he passionately renewed his suit. Now, in the zenith of her fame, they 'prima donna' would not refuse him, and they were married at once by special license The Isle of Wight was chosen for the honeymoon, and they are now, no doubt, utterly oblivious of the fact of the thermometer registering several degrees below freezing point, and of the penetrating east wind which makes itself only too apparent to prosaic mortals. The London correspondent of the Age recently interviewed Mr Bradlaugh, to learn from him what would be the drift of his public discourses in the colonies — whether they would be, to use his favorite expression " antitheological," or whether they would be general in their bearing. In reply, Mr Bradlaugh said : " I draw a great distinction between the line which 1 feel compelled to follow here and the course I should pursue out there. When I went to America they were amazed that I made no attacks on theology ; but there is no parallel between the state of affairs in America and the colonies and that which prevails in this country. Here we have a privileged majority, and must be aggressive because we are in a minority ; whilst out there there is no State religion, and every one pays for what he likes. I do not see, therefore, why I should go in to denounce what is entirely a matter of free choice. On that ground, and not because lam afraid of opposition, I should probably confine my colonial addresses to topics of a general nature. 'Engineering' understands that a company has been started in California to manufacture boiler liquid from the leaves of the Eucalyptus tree, and 12 tons of leaves are used daily in the process. The leaves are put into a set of special boilers, or still, and the juice axtracted from them by boiling. The liquid finally obtained is bottled, and when put into ordinary boilers along with the water it prevents " scaling " or reduces the "scale" already formed on them. The fluid is also said to prevent rusting and pitting in marine boilers, and to have been adopted by the United States Navy. The best remedy for bleeding at the nose, as given by a prominent physician at one of his lectures, is in the vigorons motion of the jaws as if in the act of chewing. In the case of a child a wad of paper should be inserted to be chewed hard. It is the motion of the jaw that stops the flow of blood. This remedy is so very simple that many will be inclined to laugh at it, but it has never been known to fail in a single instance even in the severest cases. One of our English exchanges reprints a Newhaven despatch, published in a New York paper, telling of a singular superstition of laying a ghost. It happened in the Roman Catholic cemetery, Birmingham, and is retailed as follows :— Early on th 3 uio'ning of the 18th February four middle-aged women and two men, the latter armed with spades and picks, entered by the side gate and baited in front of a newlymade grave. The men set to work, while the women wept, and opened the grave and hauled a coffin up. The lid was taken off, and the remains of a beautiful young girl were revealed. She was the daughter of one of the women, and the mother shrieked loudly when she saw the corpse. The men stood aside, and the four women bent over the coffin, and deft fingers went rapidly through tb.3 dead girl's hair and shroud, and all the pins that could be found on the remains were removed. Then a needle and thread were procured, and the shroud and hair sewn back into their places. The lid was then screwed back on the coffin, and the remains were again lowered into the grave, which was at once filled up. It was learned that the women were of a very superstitious nature, and that they believed that if a corpse is buried with the shroud pinned up, instead of sewed, the soul will be confined to the grave for eternity, and the persons guilty of the mistake will be haunted till death by the ghost of the victim. A mistake was made in this case, and one of the women claims that she had seen the ghost for two or three nights successively, and she could stand it no onger ; so she got the other women together, and between them they hired the men to disinter the body. The ghost has not been seen since.