GOSSIP AND NOTES.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 10150, 24 September 1898, Page 8

GOSSIP AND NOTES.

Mr Harbison- Weir has beer moved to stand up—in the columns of a contemporary —for the virtues of a bird he has so often and so well depicted. N: thoroughbred English cock, he asserts, ever crows at night except at twelve, at three, and at six o clock in the morning. He may therefore be regarded a* a useful species of alarum ; and if modern mechanism has rendered him slightly unnecessary as a timekeeper, one must remember that he cannot be expected to take such merely sublunary progress into account, considering that his habit since his creation with the other "fowls of the air" has been to substitute his clarion in the dark hours of the night loi the movements of the sun. which was the farmer s clock by day. But Mr Weir cannot answer for the harm which your mongrel fowl may not accomplish, by ill-considered and untimely screcchings.' These ill-bred roosters he would destroy with as little consideration as the j-elping cur which clamours for the intervention of the County Council and destroys the rest of nervous citizens.

Really, some astounding things happen in "the ancient and Dutch-like town of Spalding, Lincolnshire," as the guide-books have it. In the immediate district, as the attentive reader will remember, old village stocks are restored until they resemble brand new pumps with japanned iron fittings- This is a curious sort of thing to happen among an enlightened electorate, but not so surprising as the action of a hale and heaity larmer who has undertaken to confine h_nself to his bed-room for a period of seven years in order to secure a wager of £1000 offered by a wealthy and eccentric Lincolnshire gentleman. The farmer has embarked on his seven years, without hard labour, in the best of spirits, his sons looking after the farm in his voluntary absence. Possibly in the intervals of reading Mr J. M. Barne's paper on the "Ideal Holiday in Bed," he will direct affairs from the bedroom wiudows. Bur these are not all the wonders of Spalding. So virile are the youths of Spalding town, that a rod of iron through the head does not despatch them instantly like ordinary mortals. Arthur Doades was, in performance of his duty, charging an old muzzle-loader in the tields, wherewith to scare away birds. While he was ramming home the charge it exploded, and the ramrod was driven clean through tho boy's head. It entered the forehead at an angle of 45 and passed out through the top of the skull, carrying away with it the boy's cap for some little distance. Arthur Doades, however, did not die. He was carried to Spalding Hospital, where they thought he might recover. There is precedent for such an opinion, through a case of an explosion at an American factory, where a man had a bar of iron driven right through his heady His friends literally saw through him, yet he recovered.

Are there any limits to the gullibility of the public? We suppose not, since the "confidence trick" is always with us in some shape or form. An American paper has just "exposed" a "plant"' which one would have thought could have deceived nobody. A company was formed for extracting gold from sea-water by electricity. The name of Edison has accustomed the American public to marvels, and we are told that they jumped at this new idea, and subscribed largely, on the faith of an experiment alleged to have been made, which showed that sea-water contained the precious element. This so-called experiment is said to have consisted in the simple plan of lowering a bottle into the sea and drawing it up with a solution in it containing gold. So easy did this appear that "one of the largest shareholders" investigated the matter, and discovered—what Mould hardly surprise most a diver was waiting at the bottom of the water ready to pour chloride of gold into the bottle. And so the enterprise has been exposed, if the account given in the "New York Herald" is to be accepted. But where did the "electricity" come in? Surely our American cousins are;:a bit too 'cute for this amazingly elementary fraud? . "

Apropos of the light side of cricket there are two good stories in the work on "Harrow School," which Mr Arnold has just published. One tells of Dick Chad, or "Old Pipes," the keeper of the ground in the forties. "One 'day," writes Mr C. S. Roundel!, "when the present master of Trinity was in the school eleven, he, propounded to Chad some knotty question about cricket. Chad's answer, slowly and oracularly given, was as follow:—'Well, Mr Butler, if you ask my opinion upon this question, I should say that, in my opinion, sir, it was not only doubtful, but doobious.' " The other is to the following effect:—"About the same time [1845] the story goes that, when fielding out on a hot afternoon in one of the school matches at Lord's, the nose of one of these young cricketers began to bleed; that, between the overs, his anxious mother besought the captain of the eleven to allow her son to retire for a while; and that she was met with the brutal answer, 'Not a Harrow boy shall leave the ground so long as he has a drop _of blodd left in his veins.' "

Mr Labot/chere, who contributes an interesting article to "Truth," on "Prince Bismarck as I knew him, relates the following anecdote : "I was with him in Russia. He did not go much into society, out studied Russian, and sought to establish a close friendship between Russia and Prussia, in both of which aims hey succeeded. Two men so dissimilar as he and Prince Gortschakoff, the Russian Chancellor, could not have been found. But they managed to hit it off together, and the then Emperor of Russia had a great liking for Bismarck. The Duke of Ossuna was then Spanish Ambassador in Russia. He was ostentatiously hospitable. One day, at one of his dinners, Prince (then Count) Bismarck and I came out of the dining-room together. As we passed through an outer room, we saw the Dutch Minister, a somewhat penurious gentleman. Bismarck said to mc, 'You have often heard of Prussian love of annexation. Hwe stand talking, and do not let him suppose that we are watching him, you will see Dutch annexation.' There was a box of cigars on a side table. The Dutchman approached it, looked towards us, and thinking we were not observing him, filled his pocket with the cigars."

They seem (the "St. James's Gazette" says) to have solved the tip question in Austria, very much to the satisfaction of the tippers, by giving the custom, a legal binding force. A visitor who, with his family, hod stayed at an hotel for nearly six weeks, gave the man-servant who took the luggage to the station a "tip" of six florins. The man demanded ten, and when it was refused took the baggage back to the hotel. The man was prosecuted for extortion, threats, and injury to property, but was acquitted. Upon appeal this result has been upheld, on the ground that the visitor knew the man received no wages and had a legal claim to twelve florins at a recognised rate, according to "local usage" of so many kreutzers a day. We may, of course, say that it is very improper that hotelkeepers should thus compel their customers to pay the wages of the servants, but if we are to have tipping at all there is something to be said for putting it on this definite legal basis. Then you know exactly where you are. But there is grim humour in the notion of an hotel porter (being entitled to impound your baggage if you don't fee him acording to his expectations. That povrei might easily lead to complications that would provide abundant material for a "new line" in farces.

It is not always that comic papers are as funny -<■ the following, which is headed "Talkh.o Quaker": "It is no easy luaiter for a novice to talk 'Quaker' fluently. "The tongue becomes confuse dwith the triple choice of pronouns and flaps hopelessly around the palate. I well rememner my clumsy effort to engage in con7_r->-i.:ion with a farmer whom I met near Ghr.ter When I happened upon him, le \uts „it:ng upon a fence, vacantly staring at a criaincoloured cow in the adjacent field. I at once denned him to be a "Friend' in undress, and determined to delight iie tld ftiJow and amuse myself by carrying <v a.. c ki'iul dialogue in his own idiom, This is bow I succeeded; 'How do sir? Is—that ia— -are thee meditating?' ifhe was delighted

he controlled his emotion admirably. All he did was to gape and enquire, 'Hey? ine field' the birds, the flowers, I pleasantly pursued, 'are enough to bring thou areams—• 1 mean dreams to thou.' He was looking at mc now, and critically. I felt that my syntax had been very idiot'o instead of idiomatic; so ,wiping the sweat from my brow and hat, I eyed him calmly and observed. 'Those cows, are they thy s—or thee's—that is thou s— durn it, I mean thiiie's?' It was very unfortunate. He crawled down from the fence, nibbled at a phi oi tobacco, and. as he ambled away, muttered indignantly. 'Go to Bedlam! I'm a farmer, but .thank Heaven, I'm not a

loonatic:'"