Bits from Rooks.

Evening Star, Issue 6913, 28 May 1885, Page 4

Bits from Rooks.

FOOD AMD THE VOICE, Singers have the reputation of being capricious, says Clara Louise Kellogg in the ‘Critic,’ because they are exacting in the matter of food. The average landlord thinks that what is good enough for one of his guests is good enough for all, making no exception of the artist. Mdme. Patti has encountered this landlord, so she travels with her own cHef, who prepares her meals for her. This is not caprice, it is a necessity. It is not that she wants such a variety of elaborately-prepared food, but that she wants it to be thoroughly nutritious and digestible. If she suffers from indigestion, it affects her voice. Colds are not the singer’s only enemies. 111-prepared and unsuitable food is as injurious to her voice as a draught of cold air. A celebrated professor in Rome told Charlotte Cushman that there were three things necessary for a primet dunnu to do —eat, sleep, and sing. When a singer is singing she has to live the most regular and systematic life. She eats her dinner at three o’clock in the afternoon, or four at latest, and it is two or three hours before she goes to the theatre, and another hour and a-half before she sings, or four hours between eating and singing. After jthe opera she may eat the little supper that is so highly prized by all “ professional” people, not because of its conviviality, for it must be very simple and li»ht, but rather because it can be eaten with the knowledge that there is plenty of time for digestion. Sweets, highly-spiced food of any kind, and nuts, must be carefully avoided by the singer, and even icewater is one of the very worst things for the throat. It should never be drunk just before singing, for it leaves the singer as hoarse as if she bad caught a violent cold. She cannot drink, yet the exercise of singing makes her want something to moisten her throat with. Different singers use different drinks for refreshing the throat, according as their experience lias taught them.— 1 The Caterer.’ MU DARWIN AMi THE DI KE OF AIKJYI.L. In the last year of his life .Mr Darwin did me the honor of calling upon me in my house in London, r.nd I had a long and very interesting conversation with that distinguished observer of Nature. Darwin was above all things an observer. He did not profess to be a theologian or a metaphysician ; it was his work in the world to record facts, so far as he could see them, faithfully and honestly, and to connect -them with theories and hypotheses, which were constructed at all events for a temporary ' convenience, as all hypotheses in science must be before being proved. But in the course of that conversation I said to Sir Darwin with reference to some of his own remarkable works upon the “ Fertilisation of Orchids,” and upon “The Earthworms,” and various other observations he made of the _ wonderful contrivances for certain purposes in nature— I said it was impossible to look at these without seeing that they were the effect and expression of mind. I shall never forget Mr Darwin’s answer. Ho looked at me very hard, and said : “ Well, that often comes over me with overwhelming force ; but at other times,” and he shook his head vaguely, adding “it seems to go away.” 'ibis is exactly the language which we have expressed in a remarkable passage in tho book of dob, in which that truth is expressed which every Christian holds—that in Nature we cannot see the Creator face to face, and that there are difficulties and veils between Him and the visible methods through which He works. “ Behold I go forward, but He is not there ; and backward, but I cannot perceive Him ; on the left hand where He doth work, but I cannot behold Him; He hideth Himself on the right hand that l cannot see Him.” —The Duke of Argyll, in : Good Words’ for April. IN A LONDON OPIUM DEN. Over the doorway arc certain mystic -mns. I ask my companion their meaning. “Ybey arc Chinese characters,” he replies,

“ and signify righteousness and harmony.” Beneath these mendacious symbols we pass, and stumble into a little apartment on the left, from the open door of which a reeking odor is issuing, of extreme unpleasantness, caused by the escaping fumes of opium. The room is of the smallest dimensions, and the ceiling so low as almost to necessitate the removal of one’s hat. The purposes, however, to which the room is put are by no means proportionate to its size. A rapid glance reveals its use at once as shop, smoking divan, and grill-room. ... We now proceed to explore the back and upper parts of the house. Throughout, every possible advantage appears to have been taken of the very limited space at command. In the passages we find partitions erected, forming, with the wall, cells so narrow that the ordinary mattress barely finds place within it. In the rooms an arrangement is observed similar to that which prevails on board of ships. The mattresses are posted berthlike, one above the other, and thus, in a miserable apartment barely 12ft by Bft, accommodation is made for from ten to sixteen smokers. On the entire premises of this wretched construction as many as fifty can be provided for simultaneously. None of the rooms are filled through which we wander, and few of the coaches are for the moment tenanted. But the reasons for this are not hard to surmise. Prom a remoter room have long been issuing the excited shouts and eager exclamations that betray the progress of a game of hazard. Entering this room we find that the mattress has been removed from the upper of two opium lounges, and replaced by a cloth, the board beneath thus forming an easily - extemporised gambling table. Gathered around this table, some sitting, some standing, some even squatting, tailorlike, upon it, others stretching on tip-toe in the background, and not a few mounted on stools fetched for the occasion, are three-and-twenty Chinamen, All arc intent upon the game, and it is a striking picture that, in the flickering glare of the dull lamp, their eager, peering, closely-packed faces offer. —‘ Good Words.’ A NATIVE GENTLEMAN, My Ashanti gentleman —for such ho was beyond all mistake—had a charming face, a handsome one, indeed. People of his race, who boast their blood, are not black at all; indeed, from one end of Africa to the other, kings and nobles are yellow or bronze, according to my experie*ce. It is the commonest form of abuse among negroes, in Africa as in America, to call a man “black.” The Ashanti gentleman has neither a flat nose nor thick lips nor ebony skin. To take Bossoonogo as a specimen, he is not darker than many Spaniards, has features of the European cast, and an eye that protrudes in the manner admired by French people, and called a Jlf-irr de tele. His dress, even when a prisoner, as I saw him, is a miracle of taste, unequalled since the Roman toga vanished. One single piece of “cloth” it is, a cotton print, home spun and home dyed. Your Native gentleman, whether from east or west, would not condescend to wear Manchester stuffs, and he is conspicuously right. To see Bossoonogo was to see a picture of antique grace. It was a marvel how ho kept so clean that sheet of cotton, adorned with blue arabesques and flowers on a white ground. Nothing else did he wear by day except the “breech-clout,” fringed with silk, the ends of which fell below his knees. At night he rolled it round him, and so slept; but the stiffening never went out of it, and its folds were always statuesque. He looked a swell, every inch, bright anil wholesome and courteous, though tied by his wrist ami trudging barefoot through the mud, . . . When permitted the use of a carriage hammock (instead of walking chained to a common soldier), Bossoonogo stepped into his conveyance with a courteous bow towards the marine. Through my interpreter he ex pressed regret that circumstances over which he had no control forbad him to reward Private Smith for his “ uniform consideration,” etc. The face of that gallant soldier when he thoroughly mastered this parting shaft of politeness did one good to see. “Why—why!” he said, “this nigger—he —oh, blow it! ” Words would not come to him fitting to describe his sentiments. I saw him again two days after, with his remaining captives still in tow. Private Smith had changed into a thoughtful man ; the sublimity of Ushanti manners had overpowered him. —“Chronicles of No-Man’s Land,” by Frederick Boyle. A NATIVE SOLOMON. I was sitting with the Raja on the raised platform in front of his house, drinking tea in the cool of the evening. Suddenly our peaceful, silent smoking was disturbed by a young and very pretty girl, with flowers in her hair and silver ornaments on neck and arms, who rushed up the ladder and threw herself at the Raja’s feet in a passion of tears. After her ascended slowly, one by one, a number of villagers, wrapped in their long homespun mantles, who quietly sat down on the platform to the right and left of jfre chief. The Raja smoked on silently, untSl the woman’s sobs had grown somewhat less violent, when he remarked quietly, “Weeping is good for women.” A few more puffs of fragrant tobacco, and as the sobbing still continued, he added with solemnity, “Three conditions are to be avoided. First, not to be able to weep; second, to weep without knowing for why ; third, to weep too much.” The last condition was pronounced with impressive distinctness, and an assenting murmur went round the assembly. The girl raised her head. “My father ! I cannot live with Tawngey. I hate him !” “ What has he done ? Has he beaten you ?” “ No, he has not beaten me ; that I should not have minded. He suspects me. He watches me, and I will not endure it. J demand to be divorced. Oh, my father, be it on your head !” “Tawngey, comp forward, thou son of foolishuess ! Wliat is this I hear?” Tawngey appeared, slinking shamefacedly from the depths of the crowd. First making a lowly obeisance, he sat down before the chief. “My lord, ” said Taw ngey, “1 saw her flirting with ”“It is false—— it is false !” vehemently cried the girl,

dashing away her tears. “ I went with the other girls to draw water in the stream, and Adui’s sweetheart Powtliee came and began laughing, and so we splashed _ him with the water. Then this man* {pointing with concentrated scorn at the wretched Tawngey), “this, man was spying behind a tree, and he came and dragged me by the arm and abused me before them all. I never suffered such shame. Release me, oh my father ! I will not live with him.” Here she again prostrated herself at the Raja’s feet. A dead silence ensued, broken only by the girl’s sobs, Tawngey looked as though he wished the earth would swallow him, but lie said not a word. Suddenly the Raja spoke again, and gave orders. “0 you and you (naming two or three elders among the spectators), take away these two wicked ones who disobey the holy law. Strip them of all their clothes, save one cloth only to the woman, and shut them up together in the great empty guest-house. In the morning I will hear them again. Enough! I have spoken. ” So the young couple were hustled off, and shut up in a bare empty house. The night was very cold, and as I pulled my thick wadded quilt over my shoulders before goinj* to sleep I admired the shrewd wisdom of the Raja. In the morning, when their clothes wore handed in to them, and the door was opened to conduct them before the chief, they quietly slipped away baud in hand, and departed peaceably to their own abode.— “Tho Flynn the Wheel, or How I Helped to Govern India,” by Lieutenant-colonel T. H. Lewin.