TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume L, Issue 8542, 24 July 1893, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

~ The present financial crisis The Panio in the United States, where in banks are toppling over in a American t way that almo-t'routjMel-v * bournes T_lelt«)urn-,~-eems To be the culmination of a period of pressure which began to moke itself manifest many months ago. The foolish silver legislation started the mischief," but a remarkable development of the protectionist policy has done even more to bring about the- wave of financial disaster which is strewing the business centres of the United States with commercial wreckage. What the Land Boom was to Victoria the'« Trust Boom" has been to the United States. The New York correspondent of the Argus gives some striking instances of the way in which these nefarious attempts to fleece the community have come to grief. The specu- j lation that went on in their shares was enormous, and the stock was tremendously over-inflated. The White Lead Trust, established to secure a monopoly of the; manufacture of white lead, and thus to put up its price throughout the country, began business with a share capital of 90,000,000 dollars, although the actual value of the fifteen or twenty factories bought up or controlled by the Trust did not exceed 3,000,000d015. The Sugar Trust, the Alcohol Trusc, the Gas Companies Trust of Chicago, the Cotton Seed Oil Trust, the Cigarette Trust, the Cordage Trust, and many others, were formed on the same line., although, I perhaps, not all on the same scale of overinflation. The owners and leading officers of the concerns made fortunes by working the shares up and down in the markets, "fleecing the public," as the Argus correspondent says, "both going and coming." The inevitable" crash, of course, come at last. Shares in the Cordage Trust dropped from 60dol. to lOdoL, and on. the 20th of May last it was estimated that the total deoline in these inflated stocks amounted to 200,000,-OOdol. Railway stocks soon, showed signs of depression in sympathy, and gradually a feeling of alarm spread among.all classes of the community, culminating, as we have said, in the present panic. All these combinations were distinctly unlawful, but that is ho bar to anything of the kind flourishing in America so long as there is money at the back of it. They can only thrive, however, under high protective duties, and the coming revision of the tariff will do far more than any repressive legislation to rid America of such a vampire system.

A wetter in Good Words

"High (Mr J. H. Crawford) has Dunsinane." visited Dunsinane, and has

- given his readers a description of the height which Shakespeare has mode for ever famous as the site of Macbeth- stronghold. Needless to say he has not been able to trace out any close resemblance between the actual scenery of the place and the panorama unfolded to the imagination in the play. Shakespeare did not work .in the fashion of the modern realists. It was not his way to visit places, note-boOk in hand, to jot down topographical details with the view of ' working them into his writings. To all such details he exhibited alordly indifference. He not only created his characters, but the surroundings amid which they were to move. Some theorists have supposed that he may have visited Scotland with a company of strolling players and even climbed the slopes of Dnnsinane, but an actual inspection of the locality gives no counten-' ohce to this view. What Shakespeare writes about it, we are assured, only shows how little he was aware of the. natural features of the pl_ce. Still it will be interesting to those who have not been there to know what it is like. Dnnsinane, Mr Crawford f tells us, is in the south-east corner of Perthshire, and is the last height of any importance on the western aide of the Sidlaws. It is a peak standing upwards of 1000 ft above sea leveL On the one side it descends gently to the plains j. on the other, it is sharply cut off from a neighbouring hill by a narrow and somewhat stern gully. Theeammiit is irregularly-oval Shaped, and almost level. It is entirely surrounded by an artificial mound of stones and earth, popularly known as Macbeth's Castle, of great thickness, and still in some places of considerable height. The enclosed space is 150 ft by 70, which approximately represents the area of the plateau. According to our authority, however, it could not have existed in the time of Macbeth. In the eleventh century there were no stone and limebuiidings, theearliest fortifications being constructed with earthen mounds and wooden palisades. It is a good thing, therefore, that Shakespeare was not archaeological and realistic in the notebook sense. We would not exchange the walls and battlement- and banqueting rooms, created for us by the magic, of the great dramatist for the sordid reality of the earthern mound and wooden palisade.

Thb British Medical Journal The has set itself to discover the Afternoon momentous question as to Nap. whether the afternoon nap is

or is not beneficial. The conclusion it comes to is that it may be good in certain cases. Our contemporary says :—

Other things being equal, the value of morning sleep is less than of sleep by night; it is lighter, and more open to disturbances. He who reals and writes by night finds at threescore or sooner that he has unduly taxed his strength ; for such a person " the afternoon nap" is clear gain—it adds to tbe sum of sleep of a sort. Elderly people and bad sleepers often wake very early, and re-main-awake in spite of the friendly sandwich; for these the later nap is useful. There are, too, hardwOrked men of -aturally feeble powers who benefit greatly by any addition to -heir hours of steep; but for the ordinary man who sleeps of an afternoon; the judicious physician wfil prescribe less luncheon. Finally the value of casual slumbering to persons suffering from " insomnia " is not sufficiently well known. It is too often suopoaed that sleep ia a fund which must be lioarded np for use in due seasons. On the contrary, sleep breeds

sleep, and the warm feet, the incurious mind, and the raised position of the easy chair may offer what the softest pillow refuses, and thus the sweet custom of sleep is re-established."

Practically the advice seems to amount to this, that an afternoon nap is a very good thing if you don't get enongh sleep in the ordinary way; otherwise it is superfluous. The question, however, is not ol much practical concern to us in these colonies. The afternoon nap is especially a luxury of the leisured classes in older countries. Here we have no time for that Sortof indulgence.