Miscellaneous.

Clutha Leader, Volume XX, Issue 1036, 1 June 1894, Page 7

Miscellaneous.

On the average there are 10,000 advertisements a week in the eleven London morning papers. It is wonderful to see the marvellous intelligence with which the pigeons of Sfc Mark's, in Venice can discriminate between residents and visitors in the grand square of that city, the Piazza of St Mark. The moment a foreigner showshis face in the piazza the pigeons set upon him in crowds, hoping to be fed. They do not tronble the natives, who may be sunning themselves by the hundred in the square. It may interest those, who are no millionaries to hear words of consolation from the pen of one. Mr Andrew Carnegie writes that he does not spe how the daily life of the millionaire differs much from the life of men without millions. He works just as hard as his poorest neighbour. The millionaire is the cheapest man in the community. He works like a slave, and all he asks of the community in return is his board and clothes. He may be happy in possession of millions, but still his enjoyments, arid even his powers, are limited. He cannot have more than he consumes. He can eat only one dinner, wear only one suit o£ clothes at a time, travel only in the same parts of the world as the poorest sailor, see the same plajs as those obliged to sit in the gallery, read the same books as the humblest clerk. According to the Baltimore Sun, the canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific is to be neither the Panama nor Nicaragua, but a canal in the northwestern corner of South America, where, it is alleged, the tides of the Atlantic and Pacific approach within 18 miles of one another. This statement is made on the authority of Mr J. A. Kar<veise, a civil engineer, who had just returned to the United States from a survey of the region, The proposed water way is to be at sea level. The canal works would be 8£ miles long, including 11,800 feet of tunnel. The total cost, with approaches formed by dredging, would be 48,000,000 dollars. On the Pacific side San Miguel Bay would be the harbor and on the Atlantic side the Gjilf of Darien. The other cfcy in Adelaide, says a Sydney papery a clergyman preached a sermon on the* besetting sins of the people, illustrated <vith a vai-iety of stage properties. Drink, horse-racing, dress, gambling, and so on were dwels upon as predominent vanities of thfe flesh, and in turn empty whisky bottles, packs of cards, looking glasses, jockey's whips, and other wordly paraphernalia were exhibited to trembling sinners in the front of the 'house,' as it is hardly iireverpnt to call the place of such theatricaiism. In the TTnittd States this method of spiritual improvement prevails to a large extent among the imitators of the Rev. de Wit Talmage, whose tabernacle has long been known to persons of wrath as ' Christianity's Circus.' Talmage has Marie Corelli's gift of tricky magnificence of word garniture and lurid effect-making. Once he, or one of his understudies, preached a terrifying sermon on Hell, which was described as having four great gates for the admission of four distinct classes of the great American people. And the paper which reported this statement dealt crushingly and properly with it by remarking, ' We hope they open outward in case of fire.' The Wellington Post says ; — ' A most cruel and unjust act has just been performed by Ministers. Messrs Mitchell and Kinsella have for many years been Parliamentary Committee reporters. Both were members of the original Hansard staff in 1867. Mr Mitchell has been in the service ever since. In 1886 he retired from the Hansard staff in consequence of illhealth and was appointed a committee reporter. Mr Kinsella has been for some 10 years past a committee reporter at LI 50 a year. If either of these gentlemen had been paid at the rate casual reporters are for committee reporting they would have earned a much larger amount of salary. Last session Mr Seddon, despite the Speaker, cut both officers off the estimates, and whffii the Speaker, Sir R. Stout, and others drew attention to the f-act, insisted on the claims of Messrs Mitchell and. Kinsella, and pointed out that it would be the reverse of economy to get rid of them, Mr Seddon, after much fencing, gave a half promise to provide, for Mr Mitchell, but would do nothing' for' Mr Kinsella, because he, during the recess, acts as special Wellington correspondent of the New Zealand Herald. Mr Seddon, who apparently thinks a' committee reporter should live on LI SO a year, and that it is, wrong for him to be a newspaper correspondent for an independent paper, does not at all object to a much more highly paid; Hansard reporter working on a' Government organ throughout the recess, and quite recently took such a reporter with him through the Maori country as a special correspondent to chronicle his wonderful adventures and doings by flood and field amongst the Maoris. As to Mr Kinsella, his offence evidently is that he has presumed to act as correspondent in Wellington for an Auckland paper which dares to be independent, and with the staff of which MrKinsella has been connected for soma 20 years,'

The Prince of Walps has escaped the threatened return of dyspepsia, which recently caused his medical men some uneasiness, and is now wonderfully well. When one thinks of the enormous amount of hard wprk that a royal personage has to undergo in the ordinary performance of the daily duties demanded by his.- position, it is extraordinary that any constitution can stand the continued strain. The Prince of Wales has, practically, -lived half-a-dozen lives. Every hour of the day — and for that matter, the besb part of the night too — has for years past been mapped out months ahead, and the mere physical fatigue of this constant succession of journe-yings, functions, and speech -makings would of itself be sufficient to wear out any ordinary human being in a few years. Yet, His Royal Highness has managed to get through all this terrible round of toil — for him there is no eight-hour day — to the complete satisfaction of the nation. To sit down at a key-board, like that of a typewriter, and flash electric signals so that they may be read two-and-a-half miles in the brightest sunlight and ten miles on the darkest night, would appear something like a dream. But it was recently shown, as feasable, at the United Service Institution, London. An American inventor, all the way from Buffalo, knowing nothing about either naval or military signalling, has devised a plan of typewriting in light that seems.to have infinite potentialities. But, alas ! the naval and military experts are convinced there is no practicability in the invention in its present shape. Mr Broughton, whom Colonel Gourand says is locally known as ' The Buffalo Wizard,' is a mechanical genius beyond doubt, and when he applies his mind to the difficulties before him he is very likely to surmount them. — Exchange, The N.Z. . Herald, commenting on the Aackland address of the Minister of Labor, "says Mr Reeves had the assurance to claim that the Government could not be held responsible for the state of depression which exists. But Ministers cannot use that argument, because they fiercely contended, thi-ee years ago, that the then condition of the colony was entirely owing to the doings and misdoings of the previous Government. And after they had succeeded to office, and had got posession of the considerable surplus accumulated by the retrenchment policy of Sir Harry Atkinson, they claimed that the i*ecovery which the colony then made was owing to them and their policy. The fact is the colony ought now to bfi much more prosperous than it is, and it would be so if it were not for the apprehension felt as to what the Government are going to do next. .