WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 177, 14 April 1923, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM (By T. D. H.) Another sign of Russia’s backwardness. —They have to flog people to keep them from going to church. Mr. Fraser says you can. draw a Mayor to water, but you cannot make him drink. —And when you get him there you don’t want to swap horses ivtiile crossing the stream. Til o Irish Free State does not intend io use its army for making war on any other country. —Outsiders do not understand enough of tho fine points of the game.

As Mr. Howard Carter is recovering from his illness, the superstitious will no doubt explain it by saying that the strength of the magic spell was exhausted in killing Lord Carnarvon. It is only to be expected that a spell would weaken a little after three thousand years. Sir Guv Maspero, who is one”of the great authorities on ancient Egypt, tells us that from the earliest times magic was. the great Egyptian science. According to the literature they left behind it was part of the regular daily business of the Egyptians to call up the dead, enchant the living, put < life into wax dolls, and when occasion demanded even to cut off a man’s head and painlessly put it back on his shoulders again. In the British. Museum they have working details in the recipe book of the magician at the small provincial town of Oxyrynchus. in Egypt, about 2000 years ago. The Egyptians were great belie ’ers in lucky and unlucky days, and no one would dream of going on a journey, or hardly for a walk from his own house, without consulting the calendar and the omens.

The ancient Egyptians believed the demons in the tombs if properly conjured were of great use, and propitiatory offerings at the burial places of suicides, criminals, murdered people, and all who died before their time were considered especially potent in influencing the course of events. The souls of such people were supposed to dwell beside the bodies until the period predestined for their earthly life was accomplished. and while, there they were given many commissions to execute. Racegoers may be interested. to know that Sir Guy Maspero says these souls in bondage were commonly told the names of the horses to run in the circus, and ordered to make them ill, or restive, or drive them mad, or paralyse them—in short, to prevent them from winning the race. A racing- club steward’s life in Tutankamen s time with a field of bewitched horses must have been a merry one.

Isn’t Mr. de Valera unfair to Snain when he wastes so much affection on his Irish mother country and none on his Spanish fatherland?

Iu preferring “movies” instead of “kinema” as a name for the pictures. Professor Rittman has the support of Mr. H. L. Mencken, who brought out a revised edition of his book in the American language last. year. It is the American performers in the London ■ music halls who give the English people a chance to pick up a few new Americanisms every now and again, and so keep their native tongue from becoming too frowsty—a word, by the way, which I notice the new Oxford English Dictionary lacks a derivation for, and which I am probably misusing. As time goes on even the most particular people are unbending, and even the London “Times” was able after Lord Northcliffe got hold of it to say a now sporting record had been established without putting “record” witnin inverted commas, and. the Oxford Dictionary now accepts this long-resist-ed word without question. “Bike has its place in the new dictionary, but “flapper” gets the label “(slang) after it, and “pram,” for which Professor Ripman pleads, is only admitted as a colloquialism, while “hanky for handkerchief remains as completely in outer darkness as “comfy” tor comfortable.

Clonmel, where Mr. Lynch has died, has bred its share of real, racy Irish people. Marguerite Power, who became one of the leaders of fashion in Varden in the early nineteenth century, as the Countess of Blessington was the daughter of a small farmer at Clonmel. She was married to a Captain Farmer, an officer in a regiment stationed there —tho Clonmel people have seen plenty of regiments since they gave Cromwell tho severest setback he had in Ireland. But to get back to Mrs. Farmer: she ran away from the captain,'and when he died married the Earl of Blessington. After helping tho Earl to run through Ina patrimony she became very friendly after his death with the Count d'Orsay, and lived with him until he had to flee from London to escape his creditors. To eke out her falling fortunes Lady Blessiugton took to literature, and was the Margot of her day, with a steady stream of anecdotes of famous people for public consumption, Laurence Sterne was also born at Clonmel, where his father was an officer in the garrison, an d was from wliat saw in garrison life that he drew, his Tristram, Shandy and Corporal Trim. Stories of some queer animal friendships are told in Mr. IV. H. Hudson’s “Book of a Naturalist,” which Messrs. Nelson have just published. Years ago on the family estancia in Patagonia Mr. Hudson’s sister had a tame pet lamb. When its mistress bad her lessons t-o attend to tho lamb, which was very playful and frisky, would get up a game with the youngest of the dogs. There were eight dogs on the place, and Libby, the pet lamb, gradually found their company so congenial that she spent her whole time with them day and night. The dogs had little to “do except to warn off strangers ana keep cattle from trying to force their w2!V into a plantation. Most of the day they lolled in the sun with Libby ip‘their midst, and making a comfortable pillow for them. Occasionally tbs dogs would go hunting vizcachas, burrowing rodents, found on the plains. The lamb would go too, fishin >• about from burrow to burrow and diving down occasionally to see how thin' f s were going inside. Mr. Hudson also “tells of an old lady who reared a pet cat and a pet rabbit from babyhood together and fed them out of one saucer of milk, and when they grew up from one dish. It was common, he says, to see them exchange foods, the cat - gnawing a cabbage stalk and the rabbit picking a bone. Two young men had boarded * north-bound tramcar (writes a correspondent), and before they had been seated two minutes they observed opposite an extremely pretty girl with whose charms they were immed at-ely impressed. “I’m sure I have met that girl before,” exclaimed the first excitedly. “You know her then,” was the eager reply of his companion. “Introduce tne at once.” “Sb!” returned tho other. “Wait until she’s paid her fare.” HAPPINESS. Happiness is like a- crystal. Fair and exquisite and clear; Broken in a million pieces, ’ Scattered, scattered, far and near. Now and then along life’s pathway, Lo, some shining fragments fall, But there are so many pieces, No one finds them all.