CLIPPINGS.

Press, Volume II, Issue 8704, 29 January 1894, Page 4

CLIPPINGS.

A strange scene was enacted the other day at one of the Tiflis theatres—a roomy, wooden = .A couple .of needy Georgians climbed to the roof in order to obtaiu a gratis view through the ventilators. Whilst waiting the play, a furious querrel arose between them, and the stage curtain below had juab ascended when, to the astonishment of the players and audience, the struggling Georgians came crashing through the- ventilators and fell on the stage close to ttxe footlights, the fall was some forty.five feet, and although both the unfortunate men were more or leas seriously injured, they making determined, but feeble efforts to draw weapons upon each other when they were taken ap aad removed to hospital. , -■".■■ ."1

Sir Arthur Gordon's (Lord Stanzndre'e) " Buddhist Temporalities Ordinance/issued some four years aince, does not appear to have nrorked any great improvement in the morals, habits, or manners of the Buddhist monks of Oeylon. 3>r.. Bowles Daly, who has been appointed by the Government to inquire into the subject, has visited no fewer than thirteen hundred Buddhist monasteries in the island, about which he has prepared a very remarkable report. He declares the freat proportion of the monks to be foul in ody as well as mind, utterly neglectful of their duties, and ignorant of them. " The monks, who are gradually giving ? up their * panaala' schools, are idle aad thoroughly depraved. Brutal stagnation of mind prevails, and a* for education, they know (he says) no more the philosophy of Buddhism than they do the poetry of Tennyaon." Wriviug of his visit to the Bope Temple, Dr.

Daly describes the incumbent as a gaunt withered man of fifty-three, who3o cheekbones stood oac like rocks at low water, and whose deep-set eyes gleamed spitefully on him with the disconcerting fixity of a policeman's lantern: His body, ho adds, was a stranger to soap and water, and his mind was equally foul.

It is rather difficult to distrain upon a man's goods when practically his only earthly possessions consist of a cage full of lions. This fact has been torcibly brought home to M. Leclaire, a Pari3 engineer, who made a large perambulating iron cage for a lion Uraer named Marck. Marck has recently had an engagement at the Theatre do la Gaite, "where the lions we.c introduced into a piece called " Lea Bicyclistes on Voyage," in which an actress named Madame Hob Walter danced a akirfc dance in the cage, doubtless to the great astonishment of ,the poor beasts. The cage was to coat 6,000 francs, of which,M. Leclaire could obtain only 1500 francs, whereupon he put the law ia motion. A broker wont down to seiza the wild beasts, who, possibly at the secret instigation of the owner, roared at him so threateningly directly he appeared that h§ did not care to have anything to do with their removal. The authorities of the Jar din dee Plantes, or Paris Zoo, were consulted, bub they declined to usurp judicial functions. There the matter rests at present, although the lion-tamer has undertaken to keep them safely for the present in his custody, and nob to«part with them.

A well-known firm of bankers in London have just made a profitable investment. Some time ago a man who had defrauded them of a large sum of money Mas taken into custody, convicted, and sentenced to a long term of penal servitude. As may be imagined the prison fare did not agree with a man who had, by means of fraud, lived oa the fat of the land. The chaugo affected him in many ways, but he complained more particularly of the effect the food had upon his teeth. They were not numerous or in good condition wheu he was sentenced, and as they rapidly became worse he applied to the governor of the prison for a new set. He was told that the Government did nob supply prisoners with artificial teeth, and at the first opportunity he wrote to the banking firm in question, offering, if they would send him a vow set, to give them some valuable informatioa. Thereupon tho bankers, thinking the offer might be a genuine one, sent the governor of the prison a cheque for £5, and asked him to provide the convict with a set of artificial teeth. In due course the convict kept hie promise, and sent the bankers certain information, by means of which they were enabled to recover no less than £1500 of which they had been defrauded. The investment proved even better than they anticipated, for they have just received from the prison authorities a remittance of £1, the teeth having only cost £4.

Has a newspaper a right that extracts from its editorial columus shall not be garbled? Mr Justice Kokewich has hold that it has. You must not, for instance, take a few unconnected sentences from, say, a rnbid Unionise leader, and dexterously piecing them together, present the,result to the public as au approval of Home Rule. Trie Times sought an injunction against Mr Lowe, the second-hand bookseller of Birmingham, for printing at the end of his catalogue what purported to be extracts from our contemporary warning people that auction sales were Jittie bettsr than frauds us a means for the disposal of cast-off libraries. Far better, the moral ran, go to some respectable dealer direct. A diligent search revealed in the columus of The Times in 1886, a leading article fulminating against the ■'knock-out system at auctions. Two isolated extracts from this wero the pretended authority, bo .arranged (the Judge pointed out) as to convert a denuueiation of the "knock-out" into a disapproval of auction sales In general. The defendant pleaded that he had only annexed the paragraph from the catalogue of an eminent Loadpn dealer, but the Court ordered ad iv junction, with, costs.