CLIPPINGS.

Press, Volume L, Issue 8575, 31 August 1893, Page 4

CLIPPINGS.

The safety of the Queen's fite tapestry | exhibits at Chicago is guaranteed by a bond I of 100,000 dollars. Daring the next six or seven years share- j holders in the various Australasian reconstructed Companies will be liable to pay .£8,000,000. Burglars, who entered Marylebone parish church, finding the communion wine was unfermented, emptied it on the floor. They carried off the bowl which was used at the christening of Lord Byron. A case of interest to mistresses and servants was decided the other day by Mr Justice Cave. He held that a letter written by a mistress to an aunt of a servant, describing the girl as having compromised herself with a, male servant in the same hotue, was privileged, no malice being shown. The mistress did not have occasion to prove the truth of the charge. M. Felix Battanehon, the weil-lßsowo French violoncellist and pupil of tfastin, •who died recently in Paris in h» eightieth year, enjoyed in bis day a good dew more than mere local celebrity as* performer upon that'now obsolete instrument the Baryton, or " Viola di Bardone." The instrument was ol the Viol da «&mba family, wad it

had two sets of strings, seven catgut strings played with a bow, and a dozen or more metal-strings, which acted as sympathetic strings, and were twanged with the left thumb. Haydn, who wrote 175 compositions for the Baryton, tried hard to learn to play it, but was unable to overcome its difficulties. An excellent specimen of the Baryton made by Tielke, o£ Hamburgh, towards the end of the 17th oeatury, v now in the South Kensington Museum.

Snicides have odd ways. A Hungarian of Bndapeet the other day shot himself in the head with a revolver. It turned out that the wound thus inflicted was more gainful than dangerous, whereupon, with bos face bleeding, lie went off to the public executioner's house and asked that functionary to be obliging enough to hang him. Naturally the atrange request was not acceded to. The executioner went to telephone to one of the hospitals to send for his unwelcome visitor, who, during his temporary absence, made another attempt to destroy himself, this time by hanging. He was cut dawn in time, but his condition was such that little hope was entertained of his recovery.

In France the cycle record-breaking mania has spread to women. Mile. Saint Sauveur, a well-known circus rider, has been showing the Parisians &*j the Buffalo track what can be done by a woman who has been carefully trained. In one hour she covered a distance of 164 miles without the aid of pacemakers, a very respectable performance for one of her sex, although there can be little doubt it could be beaten. The lady was dressed in a white sm-ah shirt with flowing sleeves and whit« flannel breeches fastened below the khee by three buttons. Contrary to advice, she was nipped in tightly at the waist, and did not seem to suffer in consequence, although before she had gone yery far she had to take off a leather belt which greatly inconvenienced her.

A correspondent of the Daily News, travelling through Eastern Siberia, and writing from Irkoutsk, June 6th, says:— " Considering the fuss, which has been made in England about some mission of relief to the lepers in these provinces, it is somewhat surprising to find that, not only in the provinces under the Irkoutsk Government, but in S ; beria as a whole, leprosy is an exceedingly rare disease. It appears to be limited to a few localities, and the total number of lepers registered in this vast province is sixty-six. Not only are the lepers few. but they are well provided for. A Russian Medical Inspector — Dr. Smemoff—had visited them all, and made what arrangements were deemed necessary for their comfort before any English lady thought of doiug so. They are quite as well off as the average Siberian peasant, and if as the doctors tell us, leprosy is not a disease of increased sensibility, but the reverse, they are, perhaps, quite as contented. They eat good Siberian bread, wear good Siberian clothes, live in good Siberian cottages, and even possess good Siberian cattle. If money is to be subscribed again for a mission of relief to lepers, let io not be a mission to the few and comparative well-to-do lepers of Siberia, but to the thousands and tens of thousands of their destitute fellow sufferers in the countries of Sonthern Asia, and other parts of the world."