NEWS AND NOTES

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 83, 8 April 1911, Page 12

NEWS AND NOTES-

[The following items of intelligence have been from files received by the latest mail.] A company has been, formed at Winnipeg (according to the Board of Trade Journal), with an authorised capital of £10,270,000, for the purchase and exploitation of a patent process by which oils for preserving timber can be extracted from coal tar without distillation. It is claimed that the oil obtained by this process has exceptional preservative qualities, and that, among other, things, it preserves the wood against the ravages of .insects in tropical countries. Gypsy Lee, the famous fortune-teller, so long associated with the Devil's Dyke, Brighton, is dead, at the age of seventy. With her scarlet cloak, dark eyes, and superabundance of jewellery, she was for over thirty years a picturesque figure in her caravan or tent on the brow of the dyke, whither she drove daily in a donkey cart. Hundreds of persons, from the most exalted rank to the humblest class, crossed her hand with a, gold or silver coin each year, impatient with curiosity concerning their future. She wae a close student of human nature, and her clear perception and understanding of each person with whom she had to deal a*-astonis-hed everyone. The story has often t been told, and is generally credited, that the present ' Queen, as Princess May, visited the famous for-tune-teller. To one of two ladies who called on her many yea^s ago, the gypsy declares that ehe foretold her engagement to two heirß to the British Throne. ' Mr. G. K. Chesterton, speaking at the annual dinner at Magdalene -College, Cambridge, in. commemoration. of Samuel Pepys, said that men did not confess co completely to themselves nowadays as he did. Pepys- did not conceal even from himself his thoughts &n*\ actions. If Bepys toH lies he wrote the fact down. The diary of Pepys was charmingly written, the repentances were nothing short of beautiful, and th« command of picturesque English was igrand. He would like to point out how the excellent habit of soliloquising was being killed entirely. In modern drama anything Tather than, soliloquising was permitted. Bernard Shaw would allow five doctors to be on the stage at once, and make problem plays in which one man was given three mistresses and four wives, but never was there a soliloquy. When a man talked in the presence of no human 'being h© must be a Christian; the man "believed that there was a God, and that was the. spirit which made Samuel Pepya soliloquise. Speaking at an "at home" in conJiection with the Anti-Socialist Union of Great Britain, Mr. Long, M.P., said that if they were to combat Socialism they must deal with it as a bread-and-butter question, and not as a question which could be disposed* of in a, few great phraaes. They must -show the people that" they were as anxious 'as the Socialists to realise their difficulties and to improve their condition, and they must be able to show that the remedy of the Socialists was a quack Temedy, whilst their own remedy was the right and sound one. If they did that he believed they would be able to combat Socialism, for the Briton had no desire to put his hands into other people's pockete. Kewa from the Canary Island ia to the effect that mass meetings are being held at Las Palmas and Teneriffe to discuss the long-disputed question which of those towns should aightly be the capital of the province. A revival of the violent agitation which took place a year ago is feared. Thei promised intervention of the Spanish Government seems as far off as ever. IA view of the _ delicate susceptibilities of the inhabitant of the islands this, perhaps, is not surprising. 'In honour of the Bavarian Regent's 90th birthday an album is being prepared to which the German Sovereigns and dignitaries of State and Church and eminent scholars are contributing. The Emperor leads off with the following sentiment: — "At all times ever ready for the glory of the Empire." The Emperor Francis Joseph writes : — "The consciousness of duty faithfully down elevates us in good fortune, and consoles us in hours of gloom." Most of the Princes seem to emphasise the quality of faithfulness as the Regent's most marked characteristics. ■San Luis Potosi has long been the great tuna cheese market of Mexico. There is a probability of the introduction of the article into the United States on a commercial scale. The 'variety of tuna, a tropical fruit, most favoured for making cheese is the tuna cardona (Opuntia streptacantha) of a beet-red colour Avith white' spines; but the tuna pachona* is also used. The cheese is made by simply boiling and straining the tuna pulp until the proper consistency is reached. It is of a chocolate colour, pleasant to the taste, wholesome, and slightly laxative. Sometimes nuts or flavours are added, and the product is more appetising when taken with milk. I The term cheese is descriptive .only of' the consistency of this product: It k. arather a confection, and will be sold in the United States m. small packages as a confection. - A conference of fur dealers at Irbit Fair has resolved to appeal to the Rus'eian Government to proclaim for two years a close season in eabJes, since otherwise the sable will be in danger of rapid extinction. The supply of sable furs this year has fallen enormously owning to the previous use of strychnine by trappers. At a recent meeting of the" Anti- Noise Society in. New York, Dr. Davis spoke of the improvement in the Independence Day celebrations. He gave figures showing that New York's sane celebration last year resulted in cutting down the list of dead and wounded one half. He had a word to say also on the lack of fitness .in military parades on that day/ basing his objections on the poor object lesson for the citizens of a peaceloving nation and on the hardships following on the marchers. Americans ■ are a vulgar people, said Dr Albert W. j' Ferris, president of the State Commission in Lunacy, who complained that "we allow agents of news companies to pass through our Tailroad trains vociferously attracting our attention to their wares; we allow our children to play boisterously in public buildings and in the streets; we -allow schoolboys to go stamping, shouting, and whistling through .public conveyances, and we • even cherish the idea that the;college man must be noisy, slangy, and vulgar. And thus we contribute to the cult of the vulgar." *™ ' t In Italy the journalist, with barely one or two exceptions, works for a sal3ry which the pampered ones of EnglanS would laugh at. But he has his compensations. He^ — and not only himself, but his wife and family.too — travels free on all the railways, whether Ihe journey is on business or not. If he wishes to go to fcho theatre, and take his friends, he has only to ask, and the requisite box or stalls are at his disposal — and that, however humble his professional rank may be. On the whole, 'the "English "journalist prefers not to be paid in kincL

The secretary of the Chinese Monuments Society, Pekin, has asked the co-operation of foreign , societies in the effort to expose and outlaw "a class of charlatans and adventurers from all parts of the world who visit China and commit abuses that, owing to extraterritorial law, cannot be punished in China, afterward reciting in Western lands their imaginary adventures, misrepresenting the Chinese and throwing discredit upon Western civilisation and its representatives in China." The fa^ts he cites show that not only adventux,jrs, but also thoughtless tourists and foreign 6oldiers have been guilty of acts of vandalism. This month in Mobile, U. 5. ,, there will be a celebration of the two hundred anniversary of the first settement of the city. Mobile was founded more than fifteen years prior to New Orleans, and until 1723 it remained the capital of Louisiana. Few American cities have existed under more flags than this one. Until 1763 it was French, from that time until 1813 it was Spanish. General Wilkinson seized it for the United States in the last year mentioned, and the Stars and Stripes waved over it until the Civil War, when the flag of the Confederacy was run up.. Mobile, in two centuries, has lived under five different flags. It is said to have been begun in 1702, but. missionaries may have visited the place earlier. •- Palestine is exceptionally fitted for forestry. On its sand surfaces as on its chalk hills trees flourish and fruit in an extraordinary short time. Eucalyptuses, for example, in three or four v years reach a height, and girth which "elsewhere require eight or ten, and when cut off at a height of two metres devolop to full trees, again. It is a common thing to find great olive and fig treesgrowing among the rocks. The best oranges on the European market are from the land which is sand, yet fetches now the highest price' for orange culture. Indeed, there is a jesting phrase among Jewish colonists as to Palestinian fertility : "If you but stick an umbrella^ in the soil you will next year get a crop of them." The orange trees are especially profitable, as, they fruit two months before those of Italy and Spain, giving the advantage to Jewish shippers. Jewish nurserymen are developing marked skill in grafting. Orange culture has now spread from the coast into Samaria. But the olive forestry is most promising. By 1912 the Jewish people will own in Palestine some 60,000 olive and fruit trees. The threatened strike and stoppage of all the coal mines in Scotland reminds one that slavery lingered in the Scottish mine until the very eve of the nineteenth century. Mr. Hackwood, in "The Good Old Times," draws a picture of the Scottish miner's unhappy lot in the past: — "From about the year 1445 until 1775 the miners of Scotland were bought and sold with the soil. It is stated in old chronicles that bloodhounds were kept to trace them if they left their employment, and to aid in bringing them back. By Statute law, miners were bound to work all days in the year except Paschal and Yule, and ( if they did npt work they were to be 'whipped in the bodies for the glory of God and for the good of their masters.' Not until 1775 was the first law passed in an attempt to better this state of things, but it was 1799 ere the law gave the working miner of Sootland his .complete freedom. '- Although Manx laws are in many respects ahead of ours, in other ways they lag behind. All the revenue of the island is raised by taxes on food and drink. There are no death duties, no income tax, no property tax, no land tax, not even a tax on man servants or the coats-of-arms which decorate the carriages of the well-to-do — nothing, in fact, which differentiates bet-ween lich and poor. The working classes, too, are unprotected as well as overtaxed. No factory laws are in existence, and no at■fempt has ever been made to limit the hours of shop assistants, although Manxland is essentially a nation of shopkeepers. Then, although usury is forbidden by law, imprisonment for debt is etill legal, and is commonly' resorted to. The successful manager of 3 / newspaper syndicate, a part of whose business it is to purvey serial stores, was asked not long ago what were the qualities that found favour in the eyes of his public. He insdo various answers, but finally, when pinned down to the x question exactly what was the indispensable element— the very quintessence that must never be missing — hie reply was brief and to the point. "Mediocrity," he said, and no word more. And he meant it, too. Nor did he consider it a hard saying, as one who should confess that the taste of the middle classes was middling bad. The first thing to bear in mind is that he was speaking of fiction; and sad experience shows that in that there are worse things than mediocrity. But a short time ago a Chicago man was convicted of murder, committed while housebreaking, solely on thumb print evidence. The appeal to a higher court from the death sentence imposed will, it now appears, be «nuch strengthened by a recent sensational development in England. At last, the thumb print system has brokendown in at least one case. An accused person, having been identified as the criminal by the method, was able to establish a perfect alibi by the records of the British Army 3 in which he had been serving, and his release was ordered by the court. The Duke of Norfolk— Premier Duke and Hereditary Earl Marshal of England — is known as "the. worst dressed man. in England." He is quite indifferent as to his personal appeaiance and affects comforb in clothes rather than show. One day he chanced to be standing outside a railway station in his shabbiest attire. A lady bustled out of the waiting-room, apparently in a very great hurry. Casting an eye at the poorly-clad figure in the Ul-litting clothes, she promptly surmised that the man was hanging around for any odd job he might pick up "Here, you !" she called, "fetch me a cab, and he quick about it'! I'm late now." She didn't know she was addressing the first of all the peers of England, and the Duke did not let her know either. He meekly trotted off and brought a cab round, and gratefully accepted the sixpenny bit the lady thrust at him, as he carefully closed- the door of the cab for her. That sixpence is worn on his watchchain, and is one of his most cherished possessions, representing the only money he e?er really earned. Anyone who will cast his mind back to the long debates that took place in the House of Commons in the session j of 1909 will remember that the one feature of the Budget which stood out above all others was tho proposed new system of taxing land values. If the phrase "Lloyd Georgian" finance means anything at all, it mea.ns the imposition of Land Value Duties. Bearing this in mind, and looking at the Revenue Returns for the period ending 31st December last, it will be seen that to wards the enormous increase of £43,645,000, the new Land Value Duties contributed only £210,000. This does not prove, of course, that the Land Vylue Duties may not yet be successful. What it does prove is that the figures hailed with such delight by the Radical Press give no information as to the success or failure of the essential feature of Mr. Lloyd-George's Budget.