CLIPPINGS.

Press, Volume L, Issue 8557, 10 August 1893, Page 4

CLIPPINGS.

Some of the medicines at present in use by European physicians are enormously expensive. A preparation of the Calabar j bean, administered for lockjaw, called " physostigmine salicylate,*' is worth £100 an ounce. There are 15,170 free schools «in England and Wales, with 3,429,577 children. The total number paying a fee in schools receiving a fee grant, but still chargiug a fee* ranging, from under Id to a little over od, is 849,091. A gentleman who has recently come into a fortune, and desires to " go the pace " and " get into the right set," inserts the following remarkable advertisement in the London Standard :—" A gentleman of culture and means, who has lately led a somewhat solitary life, is now desirous of entertaining young and bright society at _ dinners, theatres, races, picnics, &c ; strict confidence and liberality "may be relied upon." A novel petition was lately presented Manchester, Salford and neighbourhood to the House of Commons; measuring about 645fbin length, and containing' 10,000 signatures of carters, lorrymenand others who come under the trade description of " horsemen." The petitioners ask Parliament to prohibit the practice called " the two-cart system," which is prevalent in the North of England. The custom is to place two onehorse carts under the control of a single driver, the horse of the second cart being fastened to the back of the first. One of the quaintest details of the opening of the World's Fair at Chicago that has reached England is the description of how, in the quagmire through which the gathering crowd had passed, hundreds of lost goloshes, hats and other articles were visible, and were afterwards collected by the bucketf nL It must have been a very Slough of Despond, for the rubber or gum shoe of the i_.mer.can is too practical ia its fastenings to come off easily, and is a very useful article in a country where all but the very rich proceed even to evening parties in public conveyances. There is a story, by the way, of an Englishman who was horrified to hear on American lady asking for a door mat on which to " wipe her gums."

Sir Herbert Maxwell contributes to the Nineteenth Century an article on the Craving for Fiction which in the light of public library circulation statistics seems to him to have far transcended due limits. His advice to the reader is to apply as an infallible test to any novel, the question—ls it worth reading, pencil and notebook in hand ? If not, Sir Herbert would set it down as not worth reading at all; |nd he solemnly warns **' the young person of leisure" against discursive reading, his maxim being, "Read anything bearing on a definite subject."

Mr W. Roberts (editor of the Booliusorui), writes, iv the same Review, a very readable article on Rare Books and their Prices, a subject on which he is on undoubted expert. It is, it seems, one of the special virtues of book collectors that they never read their editiones princepes and other Biblical gems; if they did there would be be no fine or spotless copies of anything in the market. Reading first editions, indeed, is in the eyes of the collector a more heinous sin than manufacturing pipelights out of the leaves of the Bible. As to the prices of rare books, Mr Roberts informs ns that a magnificent copy, on paper of the Mazarine Bible, printed by Gutenberg and Fust (1450-55), not so long ago realised at a sale £3900, and in 1889 the " Hopetoua " copy, slightly damaged, sold for £2000. The highest sum, however, ever paid for a single book was £4950 for a copy of the " Psalmorum Codex," printed by Fust and Schorffer in 1459.

A very graphic description of a gipsy wedding which took place a few days ago at Friedrichsbagen is given by the Berlin correspondent of Woman. "The bridegroom was thirty, and the bride fifteen years of age. All the members of the caravan, about forty persons in all, were present. The women of the party were arrayed in gorgeous colours, and wore heavy gold chains and earrings. (Die wedding ceremony was performed by the head of the bona, an old gipsy, who signed to the pair to kneel before him ; he then broke a bottle of wine over their heads, and murmured some words over them. A fearful and unearthly howl from the witnesses showed that the ceremony was at an end. Then dancing followed, and in a surprisingly short space, of time over 150 bottles of wine were emptied. The gipsies began, as time went on, to get quarrelsome, and a free fight ensued, in which the newlymarried couple took part. The whole bud was at hunted off into the heath by the gendarmerie. The next day the ground which hod been the scene off the wedding was covered with brightly-coloured rags, tuffs of black hair, and spots of blood."