DRINK AND THE BATH.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXXXIV, Issue 61, 6 July 1908, Page 7

DRINK AND THE BATH.

The timo has:; happily gone by when young men were forced against their drinks at mess dinners, and the King has added to his universal reputation for wisdom and kindly forethought by decreeing that in his service at public and private dinners it should not be made compulsory to drink theSoveeroign's health in alcoholic beverages. It can no longer bo said that the conviviality of comradeship may lay the seed of destructive vices. The spread of hygienic ideas, if it lessens the temptations to vice, brings tyrannies in other forms. In countries other than Servia it is said that the daily bath has its terrors for those to whom it is a novelty. It is related of one prominent person that on his first visit to a country house where he perceived that complete immersion was expected of him, ne sprinkled the floor surrounding the bath with the water that had been prepared for him, while confining his ablutions to the limits he habitualy prescribed for them. A French story goes the rounds, which turned upon some new baths, lately erected in a provincial town, for the benefit of the enterprising citizens desiroils of indulging in so novel a proceeding as bathing. The worthy mothe'r of a largo family, during the temporary absence of the paterfamalias, announced her intention of trying the experiment, and her daring created the greatest excitement in the bosom of her assembled family, culminating in tho joyous exclamation from one of her offspring of "Quelle surprise pour Papa 1"

TALKING THE CAUSE OF DISEASE.

Excessive talking is held responsible by the Ilev. B. S. Lombard, Vicar of All Hallows, Gospel Oak, N.W., for many nervous. diseases and the increasing amount of insanity. This theory was advanced in a lecture on silence as a factor in healing given by the Psycho-Therapeautic Society. It was possible, he said, to waste an enormous amount of vital energy by excessive talking, and the excessive taJker was a human viper sapping the vital energy of those around him. People who are silent by nature are seldom ill, explained the speaker. Very often those whom the specialists receive >' in their consulting rooms are great talkers. People induce illness by talking about their health symptoms. To talk about symptoms is a fatal habit. Tens of thousands of cases in London alone are sent to the hospitals every year and come away without the mental aspect being touched upon in the slightest degree, said Dr Stenson Hooker, a supporter of the silence theory. There was no time in these hospitals to give the needed.

The 'London Times' remarks on the Franco-British Exhibition: "The New Zealand pavilion comprises an exhibit organised mainly to demonstrate the natural resources and productive economy of the Dominion, That the exhilufc of products of this class rests on solid achievement is shown by the value of the oversea export tra de, of New Zealand, which amounted in 1907 to over twenty millions sterling—all but a small part was derived from the country's pastures fields, mines, and forests."

Then there was the case of the Cotopaxia, a Pacific mail steamer, lost in the Straits of jMagellan, which, although well-nigh all out-