NEWS AND NOTES.

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 148, 23 June 1906, Page 12

NEWS AND NOTES.

The largest Bible Class in Great Britain is at All Saints' Church, Sheffield. The average attendance is 1600. In a BUI to control Sunday trading i in Scotland "goods" are defined as "all ■.corporeal movablea except money." The Paris "l&y-day" scare caused an exceptional rush of visitors to London, and was a source of great profit >o English hotelkeepers. There was also an extraordinary demand in London for Paris newspapers. Formerly, according to the Australasian, "many of the London public-houae-keepers were list-bookmakers. There are no betting-shops in England nowj in fact, we believe, they are unknown in any country save Australia." In September last Mr. Georgo Vaughan, a Northampton grocer, recovered his eyesight through a shock received in coming in violent contact with a pillar letter-box. He is, however, now fast losing his sight again. The good people of Buntingford, owing to their town accidentally falling on the meridian of Greenwich, lament that they have no longitude. Rather a distinction than a grievance, one would think, and "zero" is easy to bear in mind. A new law, forbidding the. sale of absinthe, has just been passed by the Belgian Parliament. Under its provisions, the manufacture, transport, storage and sale are forbidden under a penalty of from 26f. to 500f., and imprisonment of from one week to six months. Dr. Rutherford, M.P., in a lecture at Preston, stated that the head waiter in the House of Commons lately went to the secretary of the Kitchen Committee, and exclaimed : "Is not this deplorable? Over a hundred dinner bills, and not a single one took intoxicants!" Of M. Goremykin, the new Russian Premier, it is said that so little disposed is he to concentrate his efforts on any hard work that he cannot remain half an hour in a room without lying down on a sofa. According to die verdict of his colleagues, heaviness, indolence, and cunning are his chief characteristics. Janet Bey, who died on 28th April, was the favourite of the Sultan, his Second Secretary and his confidential adviser. He it was, if reports may be trusted, who organised ,the Armenian massacres and violated foreign mail-bags to get documents implicating high officials. The spies on the Young Turkish Party were all under his orders. He had a great rival in Tahsin Bey, the First Secretary, a very powerful factor in the palace, co powerful, indeed, that he was called "the Little Monarch." Reinforced glass, produced by rolling two plates of glass with a metallic grating between them, promises to become of great importance as a building material. In a recent French test, a sheet four feet long by eighteen inches wide, and less than a quarter of an inch thick, easily supported 10471b, and under heavy weights or exposed to fire, it bends and cracks without breaking. Its strength, resistance of fire, and passage of light, admirably fit it for roofs, shop-windows, partitions, and staircases. Very little paper has been recently made from rags; vegetable substances, such as wood, alfalfa, and straw, are especially employed. But the use of furze, wild or cultivated, has not been thought of until recently. After a boiling qf five or six hours tbe pulp is washed with water, acidulated with sulphuric acid in suitable quantity, bleached with chloride of lime, and washed thoroughly, when it is in a suitable state for employment hi the manufacture of paper. Physical exercises, which h*V© hitherto been scarcely known in connection with the educatipn of French youth (says tho Republique Francaise) tend more and more to take a preponderant place. Gymnastics at first, then fencing, football, and other games imported from j England figure to-day in the programmes ! of our lycees and colleges almost as much I as chemistry, algebra, trigonometry, and i Greek hixtory. Ono of the most neglected and at th© same time one of tho most important exercises is swimming. Among the matters considered by th© ! Postal [Congress were proposals for enabling the writer of a letter from one j country to another to prepay his cor- j respondent's reply. There were practical i difficulties in the way, not the least of 1 which was the variation of the " 25c." stamp in different countries owing to , differences of exchange. After long and ' animated discussions of different schemes, \ th© committee finally adopted the recommendation of tho British Post Office, j This scheme provides for an interna- j tional coupon, which may be purchased ' in any country joining the scheme and exchanged for a postage-stamp in any other country. A good story (says the Tatler) is told of Sultan Burghash and Sir John Kirk, then Consul-General at Constantinople. The Sultan had a very savage chained lion, and as. a happy thought he offered it to Sir John for Queen Victoria, reminding him that the lion formed one of the supporters of the Royal anne above the gate of the British Consulate, and that the presence of the real brute would therefore be highly appropriate Alive to the jest, Sir John with ready wit escaped the necessity of accepting such an embarrassing gift. "I 8m sure that your Highness would never make an incomplete present," he replied, "and when you are able to accompany the lion with a unicorn I shall be delighted to accept your munificent offer." The other day (says th© Sydney Mail) a certain country gentleman died, and was gathered to hie fathers. He left, however, instructions to th© effect that hi* body was to be cremated — an injunction which was not carried out, thereby imperiUing certain bequests and causing a suit at Jaw, The most extraordinary feature of tbe affair was, however, thp attitude of many critics towards the testator's wishes. Hia desir© for cremation, Ait absolutely healthy and reasonable desir«, wm itself denounced as " extraordinary." There was, in effect, nothing extraordinary about it. Joaquin Xlillcr, and many other men, have devised similar testatory instructions for tho postmortem disposal of their bodies. A further stag© in th© development of printing for th© blind (says the Daily lft T»l h9 « been reached by an invention of Mr. W. J. M'Larcn, of Edinburgh, Which supersedes tho laborious and costly process of punching th© Braill© letters, iaa natum of the invention is not yet digged., but it onablas n, ten-page paper, ."The Braille Weekly," to be pold fora penny. Another advance mad© by Mr. M'Laren is the printing of the embossed Braille character* on aluminium sbi*Jt«, instead of paper. The shecte ar© far easier to read than tho best paper books, especially by those who nave become blind late in life, or whoa© fingers are not very sensitive. They are also practically indestructible. The thickness of the sheets is .004 in (the four-hundredth, we suspect, is intended); and a book of twenty royal quarto page*

Twenty of the workgirls of a man milliner in Paris sued him for having kissed them. The court inflicted the maximum penalty of 12s for every kiss bestowed on each! girl. Ho bad to pay £15. ' The Cunard liner Campania on her passage from New York established communication with Poldhu, in Cornwall, when 2350 miles from tho English coast. When 1860 miles from Poldhu, news messages wero received both from Europo and from America. The Chinese Board of Education, in order to put a sfop to the practice of binding women's feet, has issued, says n. Laffan's message from Pekin, an order prohibiting the sale of small shoes. A Frenchman has invented an instrument of torture which he caljs a motorsyren. It is capable of being heard seven or eight miles away when (sounded on the seashore, but on an inland track it can be heard for twelve or thirteen miles. Mr. H. X: Raine, who paints in the dark, has executed a portrait of Mr. W. P. Frith, R.A., for the Academy Exhibition of 1906. "I have done it in fivo sittings," he says, "si 1 had done it in the liglit it would have token double the time. 1 ' An American-Indian lawyer named Owen has just gained a fee of £32,000 for winning a s.uit in the Supremo Court of the United States by which the United States Government will bo required to pay a claim of £900,000 to the Cherokee Indians. This is thu largest private claim ever awarded against the Government. A party of Chinamen who have been working at Waterloo Open, Orepuki, Southland, recently dismantled a long tail-race, which had been boarded, and the timber in which had become rotten. As a result 6f their work they netted £400 worth of gold. This shows how fine tho Orepuki gold is. The party has now commenced operations on tho San Moa Flat, which has been partly worked. Representatives of the local Free Churches have combined with the Rector of Hornsey in an appeal to the public to be content with one delivery of milk on Sundays, thus enabling milkmen to obtain a part, at any rate, of Sunday as a day of rest. Customers are being asked, in a printed circular, to express their willingness or otherwise to agree to the one delivery. It is hoped that, in the interests of Sunday rest, the appeal will have some effect. Miss Collis, a litigant wno claimed to be entitled to £l,300;000 invested in 1790,_ in 3 per cent, bank annuities jn certain names for the benefit of her father, since deceased, was refused by the Bank of England inspection pf their books for the purpose of tracing the account. This refusal has now been upheld by a Divisional Court on the ground that Miss Collis bad not made out a prima facie case of being interested in any entries shown to exist. It is not the duty of the bank, said one of the judges, to remove the hallucinations of people on the subject pf "unclaimed funds." I have just been conscientiously through the thirty o4d rooms full of pictures *at the Salon ' of the Champs Elysees (writes the Paris correspondent of the Tribune), and they haye reduced me to the condition of jesting Pijate, so that I am inclined to cry "What is 3jfc?" and not to stay for an answer; since I have seen Heaven know 6. how many thousands of answers in the last fftw hours, nearly all different, and most of them obviously wropg. It would be impossible to enumerate half the good pictures I have seen, and still more impossible to enumerate a tenth of tho bad ones. Strangers frequently find difficulty in proving their identity to- the oflicials at post offices. The difficulty was surmounted by a man in the circus business, who called fpr letters addressed "Mr. Space, Acrobat." The clerk was not satisfied with the applicant's proofs of identity, and refused to hand oyer, saying, "How do I know you are tb,e man?" After a moment's reflection, the applicant said, "All right. I will gjye you proofs," and, slipping off his coat, be proceeded to make the dull little post ofhce lively with somersaults, contortions, and circus "business" generally. The clerk, frightened nearly out of his life, am} fearing the wreckage of the premises, handed over the letters, and Baid'he was I satisfied. After the robbery of dynamite and the attempt made to blow up the Ar- ! genteuil liriu'^e (writes the Tribune correspondent), it was not astonishing that the Anaxchifcts," who are always with I us in Paris, and with whom the work- ; ing classes must not be confounded, 1 sought to cause alarm 10-day to the , public. Many bombs were discovered j in various purts of the city, but they ! were for the most part harmless. According to information received from St. Germainen-Laye some empt'ion was created by the discovery uf a bomb at j the church door, and of another at the I foot of the statue of Thieia. The Prefect of Versailles was warned, but the co-called infernal machines were soon ascertained to contain nothing but sand. A broken clog iron played a prominent part, in the trial of John Griffiths, • nineteen, a factory operative, who at Manchester Assizes was charged lately with the murder of his sweetheart. The strangled body of the girl was found on a lonely patch of ground at Shaw, pear Rockdale. There were clog-prints around the body; one of the clogs bad been broken. Strewn about the ground in the viointy was a quantity of ultramarine. When ■ Griffiths was arrested it was found that a piece of iron from one of bis clogs was missing. The impression made by the clog was identical with the footprints near tbe dead ffirp'6 body. Adhering to the other clog was a blue-coloured substance similar to that noticed upon the ground in the vicinity of the crime. It was .shown that the prisoner, prior to the murder, had quarrelled with his eweetheart, and had brutally assaulted her, Griffiths,- who maintained a stolid demeanour, was sentenced to death. At he left tho dock, he muttered ; "Aa've nobbut once fo dee." No matter now high a man's scientific attainments, it is never uafe to accept implicitly all hia conclusions. All past history shows that learned men have fallen under strange and irrational, delusions. Newton and Napier, two great mathematicians, made disastrous attempts at apocalyptic interpretation, accepting symbolic numbers as literal. Leibnitz, Newton's rival in the invention of the calculus, rejected his great contemporary's scheme of the solar sys. tern, on tho ground that God could not make a planet revolve round a distant centre, unless by some impelling mechanism, or by miracle. Ho suggested that it might require an angel behind impelling tho celestial body, keeping it m its orbit, otherwise it must fly off at a tangent. And yet, as Mill flays, •it would be difiicult to name a man more remarkable for the greatness and wide range of his mental accomplish' ments than Leibnitz." Kepler, moat wonderful of astronomers, who seems to have discovered almost everything posfiiblo for a natural philosopher to have discovered at the time he Ijyed, js credited with some extraordinary o'pin» ions, ono of them being that the earth

Th© directors of the National Bank of Ireland have agreed to accept cheques, signed in Irish, provided the signature it* repeated in English- Ono of th© advantages of this system, as tho bank points out, is that it acts as a double protection against forgery. The Japanese Government has conferred the honorary title of Professor of Medicine on Miss Tada Urata, who, some years ago graduated doctor of medicineat Marburg, being Hhe first Japanese lady to obtain that degree in Germany. The distinction is one that has hitherto seldom been conferred, on a woman. One "Michael Minch," on arriving in America by the Campania from a visit) to his English home, was discovered to be a woman. She had been employed as a- gardener on Long Island for twenty years, while her supposed wife was the housekeeper. The jnasquerader is likely to be deported. More than local interest has been aroused by the proposal 0q celebrate in Birmingham Mr. Chamberlain's seventieth birthday, and his thirty years' representation of that! city in PaTliwient. Both sections of the Unionist party will attend th© celebration, which will take place on 7th July. "My dear " is the usual mode of address in some of th© 'English counties, and th© effect to those unfamiliar with th© usage, is sometimes very comical. Addressing th© chairman of th© bench at Norwich recently, the defendant in an assault case said, "My dear, I did nob throw her out." "But, my dear; shecontradicts it," replied tho magistrate. At a Westminster inquest a witness who described himself as a navvy was noticed to b© clumsily handling th© Testament after the oath Jiad been administered. "Kiss th© Book," he was told. " Well, I'm trying to kiss the Book," rejoined the witness; "pu(i I ain't used to kissing," Th© Madrid correspondent of a Trieste paper alleges that th© Infanta Maria Theresa, of Spain, who was married to Prince Ferdinand of Bavaria at th© beginning of the year, is very unhappy jn her married lif©. H© asserts that th© Spanish Queen Mother has called th® attention of Princ© Ludyig of Bavaria to his son's drinking habifs, and that if ther© is no improvement a separation must follow. Apparently th© Prince is worthily sustaining the family traditions. Niagara is not the only place whero gigantic icicles are grown. In the northern wilds of Canada, a great pliff or pcfiisad©, 500 ft high, rises sheer from th© deep waters of Lake Magsanoga. During a recent winter a cascade was transformed to a monster icicle hundreds of feet in length — a frozen fall, in fact, which stood out in striking and bold relief against th© sombre darkness of the Laurentian rock. There it hung suspended for several weeks, an object of ■wonderful beauty to the few hunters and lumbermen who saw it. A reoenfc address on the "Circulation of Small Notes," by Mr. Sykes, secretary of the Bankers' Institute, attracted an interested gathering to the London Institution. Dealing with the subject of the possible introduction of one-pound notes into English currency, 'Mr. Sykea pointed out that England as ft nation was almost alone in not haying such small notes in circulation. Except for tho purpose of increasing the gold reserve, Mr. Sykes could oner no reason why one-pound notes should be reintroduoed into currency. Cheques and postal order;, he explained, filled every public need. The Day and Night Bank, a novel institution in th© New York financial world, was opened on Monday, the 30th April. The bank will be closed only on Snndays and holidays. It is 'situated in the club and theatre district. The institution employs a staff of fifty persons, who work in three shifts of eight hours each. Within six hours after opening, deposits to the amount of £100,000 were made. Mark Twain called at the bank, but stated that he had not sufficient money to open an occpunt, and also that he had abandoned his owl habits. The interior of the bank is finished in white marble, mahogany, and bronze. Waitingrooms ar© provided for ladies, and th© entire equipment of th© building is luxurious One lady became so infatuated with th© bank that she mode a deposit of £2000. Hundreds of theatre-goer^ and clubmen have visited the institution, Some persons have developed a practice of addressing post-cards to themselves by marking them "via towns," which will j necessitate their being sent round the I world. The British Postal Department ' objects to this procedure, and has written to the central postal authorities saying: "The views of this department an this subject ar© entirely in accord with those of the Fipnch Postal Department, the opinion field here being that it is the primary duty pf a post office to effect the delivery qf correspondence to bona fide addresses, and not to lend itself to oxperiments obviously intended for the purpose of rendering missives object* of curiosity or iilarest." The British Department makes a point of instantly debputching such post-cards to the address written on them, .without sending them around tho world. The Federal central pfficials in Australia have issued instructions to the several State departments telling them to adopt a similar course in future. Before any dtscuwsion on spelling re form is possible, contended Professor Bkeat at a meeting of the British Academy at Burlington House, the sounds, of the old Roman vowols must be familiar. Hence the first step is to teach the true pronunciation of Latin in our schools, and the fact that Oxford and Cambridge have now agreed upon a scheme with this object may prove to be the beginning of a great enlightenment. There was a time in England when Latin was prpnounced correctly, The oldest English used the Latin alphabet with the old Roman values, and Iho qld spelling of "Kent" was ''Cent 1 ' during three centuries. "People reject the spelling 'labor,' " added Professor Skeat, "on the ground that it is an Americanism. Why, tho word was used in English document* years before Columbus was born. Our writers should learn the history of the spelling, and this they will not do tjH they have learnt tho Latin alphabet." To be arrested on a charge of holding oneV skirts too high on a rainy day suggests, of course, America (remarks a Chroniclo writer). Jopkin, Missouri, was the precise scene of the incident, and Miss Flo. Rusgell its victim or heroine. It was charged against her that the height at which she held them created enough commotion to amount to a disturbance of traffic. Her youth and prettiness, if they did not aggravate the offence, did aggravate the commotion, and a policeman arrested her. Miss Russell, in her defence, said that she was wearing a now. and particularly handsome silk petticoat, and other 'things' equally nw and equally handsome, and that «he held her skirt ju«fc high enough to prevent them from being muddied, hut not an inch higher. To- clinch the matter, she had come dressed in the identical clothes, and was ready, if the Judge desired, to give a demonstration in court. The Judge, of course, jumped at it, A space wae cleared, and the court became so unjudicially fascinated with the performance that it took 15 minutea to d»-