BRIEF READINGS.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9602, 17 December 1896, Page 6

BRIEF READINGS.

The cleverest headline on record appeared in a Birmingham paper some years ago. The article was on the local cemetery, and it was entitled "The Main Road from Birmingham."

One is desolated, to learn on authority that "dancing is such a staanch ally of the devil that the Salvation Armyha3 absolutely turned its back upon it." You cannot, thinks General Booth, serve both God and Terpsichore.

People who have been accustomed to regard America as the land of journalism will hear with surprise that Alleghany, in Pennsylvania, a city of 100,000 inhabitants, is about to have its first daily paper. Johannesburg, whioh is a little over half that size, has already three morning journals aud one evening edition. It is stated in the Indian papers that the entire harem of the late Shah of Persia has been dismissed, and that the palaces are almost empty of female occupants. The ladies have been enjoined to avoid contracting marriages with any civil or military officials, but they are free in their choice amongst the hordes of mollalis or priests and merchants. Oi the six political prisoners transported in men-of-war from Ireland to Tasmania in 1818, only one is now alive—Dr. Kevin Izod O'Doherty, a Government medical officer in Queensland. His contribution to the rebellion was a leading article in a Lublin newspaper, and he is fond of boasting at journalistic dinners that no " leader " on record was so dearly paid for. He got a sentence of ten years for it. A Birmingham minister has hit npon a novel method of preserving discipline in his church. The Key. J. H. Jowett, Dr Dale's successor at Garr's-lane Chapel, prints the following noticein his local magazine:—" Will the two ladies who sit in a rather conspicuous part of the chapel, and who so frequently engage in conversation during public worship, kindly remember that their conduct is a source of much annoyance to members of the congregation ? " One of the most recent machines invented is the pedo-motive fire engine, and it seems to be a design that has a promising future before it. The firemen sit two abreast, and propel it by means of pedals. On arrival at the scene of action, the rear wheels are raised off the ground, and the pedal force exerted is then applied to working the pump, which, with the necessary hose, &a., is carried on the machine. For remote districts it should prove extremely useful.

To say that an estate of the estimated value of £3,000,000 is actually going abegging for want of an owner sounds like a romance. Yet there is such an estate in the county of Middlesex, and the question has arisen whether it ought not to escheat to the Crown. The story as it stands is that there was an old heirless man who added field to field, and then conveyed it all, for nothing, to his solicitor. It is a quaint tale, and may not be true. But there are many queer things in the world.

The late General Trochu, Governor of Paris during the siege, carried away with him from the Crimea a very high opinion of the English soldiers, and in his pamphlet on L'Armee Francaise en 1Q67 he has left a mo3t interesting account of the demeanor of British infantry in the crisis of a fight. In particular he was very much impressed by their habit of " terrible silence" when confronting an enemy's column, a habit which, in the opinion of General Foy, had also given the ascendant to the English infantry in the Napoleonic campaigns.