WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 195, 13 May 1924, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

They say that there are two million too many women in Britain but the odds are that Nature knows her own business best. An English chemist has discovered an extremely deadly gas capable ot killing off entire cities and armies. • The expenses of this sort of thing, however, seem to exceed the profits It’s a pity they can’t invent something in Britain they can get a market for. Waterloo Bridge, a message 'this morning states, is in a state of disrepair and has been closed. This famous structure was opened on the second anniversary of Waterloo and is the oldest of the fourteen bridges spanning the Thames within the County of London. Canova, the great Italian sculptor, called it “the noblest bridge in the world; worth a visit front the remotest corners of the earth,” and tho general opinion still is that it. is as fine a stone arch bridge as there is in existence. The bridge is the earliest of the three builb across the Thames by John Rennie, the Scottish engineer, who left his mark from one. end of Britain to the other. Rennie’s two other Thames bridges are the present London. Bridge and Southwark Bridge. Waterloo Bridge was built not. by a public body but by a private company, which recouped itself by levying tolls on the traffic over the bridge for sixty years. Several other London bridges were thus built by private enterprise. Westminster Bridge, put up in the sixties, was the first' built by the Metropolitan Board of Works, and as borrowing for public works was not as popular as it is now, half the money for the bridge was raised by running a lottery.

The London Bridge which John Rennie built a century ago was the immediate successor of the famous Old. London Bridge which stood through six centuries of English history. This bridge was begun in 1176. by a priest named Peter of Colechurch, and consisted of twenty stone arches and a drawbridge. The stone piers supporting the bridge were so wide and blocked up so much of the river that tho water ran between them like a mill race, and, as an old proverb had it, it was a bridge “for wise men to go over and for fools to go under.” Peter of Colechurch built a chapel on the centre pier, and in this he was buried. Houses soon sprang up from end to end. of the bridge, and on the last one on the Southwark side the heads of executed persons of note were exhibited. Hie houses were finally pulled down in 1756.

There is much queer history wrapped up with the houses on Old London Bridge, and it was a little girl falling out of a window of one of them that founded the fortunes of the long line of the Dukes of Leeds. The little girl was a daughter of Sir William Hewitt, a clockmaker who had his shop ana dwelling on the bridge, and who was Lord Mayor of London in 1582. One of his apprentices, a lad named Edward Osborne, gallantly nlunged in and saved the girl. In later years he was rewarded with her hand, andl received a large dowry lA>m her father. He became Sir Edward, and Lord Mayor in 1582, and his descendants rose steadily in the world until his great-grandson was tho first ot the ten Osbornes to be Duke of Leeds.— This historic incident shows the advantages of being a good swimmer, though it has been demonstrated, on the other hand, that one can become a duke without having done anything to deserve a Royal Humane Society s medal, or any other sort of medal.

With Mr. Winston Churchill courageously thinking of another attempt to enter the House of Commons a passage in a letter written to Lord Minto by John Morley on April 30, 1908, is worth recalling: “The belief among competent observers is that the resounding defeat if Winstqn at Manchester was due to wrath at rather too naked tactics of making deals with this, that and the other group, without too severe a scutiny in Ins own political conscience of the terms that they were exacting from him. It is believed that he lost 300 or 400 of these honourably fastidious electors. J have a great liking for Winston: for his vitality, his indefatigable industry and attention to business, his remarkable gift of language and skill in argument, and his curious flair tor all sort of political cases as they, arise, though even he now and then mistakes a frothy bubble for a great wave. All . the same, as I often tell him in s paternal way, a successful politician m this country needs a good deal more than skill in mere computation or other people’s opinions, without anx.ety about his own.”

An ex-Mayor of Chicago has been subjected to much ridicule in the United States recently for declaring that there are tree-climbing fishes. It was even suggested that he must have seen these fishes while sitting on the shores of Lake Michigan after tho rum boat had come in from Canada, but as a matter of fact he is quite correct. The, anabas scandens, an East Indian fish, can climb small trees, bv the aid of its spinous gill-covers authorities declare. A catalogue could, be made of fish that do strange things Hie re is the well-known flying fish P the fish that gives an electric shock to its enemies; the fish that climb waterfalls—the salmon and the eel • the fish that builds a nest—-the stickleback; the fish that angles for its prey, and the one that seeks it with a phosphorescent torch; and the fish described by Colonel Roosevelt, the piranha, “the embodiment of evil ferocity,” that is as fierce in its lust for blood as any wild beast.

A. benign old gentleman was in conversation with a sailor during the recent visit of the warships. The sailorman said a strange thing had happened to him a while ago. He took ill, and the doctors decided to operate on him, and when they operated they accidentally sewed up a sponge inside him. “Dear me, said the old gentleman, “I hope it has not affected your health.” ‘Not Wi,,? general way,” said the sailor., but it makes me terribly thirsty. Here is one of the many witty rejoinders of that famous wit Charles Brookfield:— “My dear Brookfield. I want your advice, ’ said an acquaintance one day. -— has called me a mangy ass. Oughtn’t I to consult a solicitor?” “I should consult a ‘vet.’ if I were you,” was Brookfield s advice. SOLACE. How gladlv I would give My life to her who would not care to live If I should die ! Death, when thou passes! by, Take us together, so I sigh Praying and sighing through the London streets, While my heart beats To do some miracle, when suddenly Xt a curve of Regent Circus I espy, Set ’mFl a jeweller’s trays of spangleglitter, A tiny metal insect-pin. a fly, This utter trifle for my love I buy, And. thinking of it on her breast, My heart has rest. —Michael Field.