TIT-BITS FROM HERE AND THERE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 261, 4 August 1928, Page 24

TIT-BITS FROM HERE AND THERE

•‘O UPRIGHT JUDGE.” "In a beastly state of drunkenness, the people’s Judge Tulaeff arrived on circuit to take a sessional court, singing hilariously and waving a bottle of vodka. Although be was due at 9 a.m., it was evening before he arrived, and the people had come 25 to 30 miles to attend the court. He up to the bench, rapped it with the bottle, and then announced that he was going to bed. During the night he arose and returned to the court, to find ten peasants, who could not find lodging, still there Wrathfully he shouted, Go home! 1 shall not sit in judgment I acquit you all without the court. The debauchery continued, and the chronicler, who writes in a Soviet newspaper, states that many times the usher spake, “Order! Stand up! The Judge lq being carried into court. HISTORY IN A TREE. At the Three Counties Show held recently the Ledbury Grammar School exhibit was a section from an oak tree taken from about ten feet above the ground. From the centre to the outside a series of radii were drawn, which cut the annualar rings, forming sections, and the historic happenings which took place when the ring was being formed are printed there. , DANCING FOR £lOOO. New York and Chicago are dancing marathons. One hundred and thirtyseven couples set off to uphold Chicago’s honour, but the winning pair emerged after 259 hours 44 minutes’ jazzing. The winning pair started as friends and finished up engaged, with £7OO to help -them upon their matrimonial adventures. But New York has offered £lOOO for her contest. HOAX OR HOLD-UP? An Oxford compositor named Snow was stopped in the street by a man and asked to deliver a note to "Mr. Crabshaw.” This note said: “The staff has been taken to Wellington Square: the ammunition will follow.” The printer gave it to a man whom he presumed to be the man intended, who was confronted by two men. He whipped out a revolver and ran away. A Miss Warren, who lives in Wellington Street, had a man caller who left a parcel for Mr. Crabshaw, who, according to his story, was to stay there, and during the night a note, “All the criminal evidence will be found behind the telephone-box in the Broad,” was left beneath her door. She gave the parcel to the police, but it only contained alum. When she told them that he had not materialised, and that she had given the parcel to the police, the visitors became very angry, shook her, and then made off. The question which is troubling the police is, “Is this a new form of undergraduate hoax?” PRECEDENT BROKEN. For 292-years Harvard University have had a rule that no degree should be conferred without the necessary examinations being passed, but now they have it no longer. A student from Chicago, with a brilliant class record, who was suffering from a serious blood complaint, was una) .e to sit for the examinations, and the president and fellows of Harvard decided to grant the degree. , MYSTERY SHIP’S NEW VOYAGE. For nine long years the schooner “Sophie” lay deserted at the West India docks, and now she has sprung to life, changed her name to “Mynonie R. Kirby,” and will shortly sail for Southern seas. Her skipper, Captain A. R. T. Kirby, is an airman-sailor, who is taking fits craft on a pleasurebusiness trip to the Pacific. She will carry a small monoplane, “to visit my friends,” as Captain Kirby puts it, and a cargo of mirrors, potato-peelers, and powder-puffs to be exchanged for mother-of-pearl, copra, and molasses. The crew have no pay-days, but will share in the profit, if any, and, of course, in the adventure.

CABLED FINGER PRINTS. An international pickpocket, Ernesto Armato, an Italian, was convicted of his favourite offence in London recently. He was identified by cabled finger-prints, taken in America, where he had five convictions. When arrested, he was trying to get his fingers into hip-pockets, by by means of a slit in his overcoat. Three £5 notes, stolen from an Indian judge, were found when he was searched. WHEN A LAYMAN BEATS A DOCTOR. When the English police authorities were trying to solve the riddle “When is a man drunk?” a doctor said that the whole thing had been fogged by the medical and legal professions, especially by the medical v profession. The man in the street was a better judge of soberness or otherwise, than a medico. SHORT SKIRTS 2448 YEARS AGO. That the short skirt, so much maligned by social reformers, is not a modern fashion is proved by a pottery cup, mad,e in ancient Greece, about 520 B.C. Ou the inside is a painting of a girl wearing a chiffon, or tunic, with ends well clear of knees. A FAMILY OF PRIESTS AND When the son of the headmaster of a school near Cologne became a monk, little did he realise that his whole family would end in the seclusion of (Convents. One of his sisters joined the teaching sisters of Luxembourg, then the other became a Benedictine nun, his parents both followed their children’s example, and now the father has been ordained a priest UPHOLDING MUMMY DIGNITY. The general public are not allowed to view the remains of past pharoahs, and only Egyptologists, and others, authorised by the Minister of Public Works, may now see the corpses. This is the result of the agitation for all the mummies to be shut up in their tombs, and their exhibition only gratified curiosity of the public, and was not in keeping with the dignity of the pharaohs. SUICIDE WHO WOULD DROWN, BUT NOT BE SHOT. A 25-year-old American' seaman jumped in a river, and when a policeman threw him a rope would not grasp it. Thinking that if he jumped in, a swimming race would result, the policeman threatened to shoot, and the would-be suicide grasped the rope, and was pulled out WHEN A REPORTER MARRIES. When Max Mencher, of the “Brooklyn Times,” New York, married recently Mayor Walker, was a guest, and paid a tribute to the bride’s beauty. He was also impressed with the Jewish ceremony, and considered it right that the parents of both of the contracting parties should go to the altar with their children, because they had brought them up, and he wondered why other religions had not copied it. It is also recorded that the reporters departed from their usual practice, and applauded the Mayor. LAST LINK WITH LINCOLN DEAD. “Chic” Kehoe, the last living being to see Lincoln assassinated, died recently, aged 80. He was known throughout the West as "The man who saw Lincoln shot.” FROM AIR TO RAIL. The first air to rail, hand to hand transfer of mail was made from an American army dirigible to an lllanois Central train, recently. Both were travelling at 30 miles per hour, and the dirigible was brought so low that the control car momentarily touched the roof of the carriage on which the mail man was standing.