HERE AND THERE.

Evening Star, Issue 10808, 17 December 1898, Page 1 (Supplement)

HERE AND THERE.

The State of Massachusetts (U.S.) has now maintained its bureau of labor statistics for twenty-eight years. What is now called a " labor chronology " is now published, which gives in detail the discussions and demands of the unions, with some accounts of the strikes of laborers in which they have taken an interest. One of the most striking features of this movement, as here revealed, is the distinct recognition of the economic theories of the English Socialists. The orators of the trade unions in America assert these theories fearlessly and positively, though not very clearly. The most important of these tenets is that which insists that laborers who do not join unions are enemies to labor in general.

The Imperial Parliament last session passed an Act authorising the establishment of inebriate homes, and It comes into force •n the Ist of January next. Under its provisions State inebriate "reformatories, or similar institutions " certified " by the Home Secretary, may be set up by local authorities or private persons, subject to regulations and inspection by Government officials. Anyone convicted of an offence punishable with imprisonment or penal servitude, anl proved to be an habitual drunkard, may, in addition to or in substitution for any other sentence, be ordered by the Court to be detained for not more than three years in either class of reformatory. After his conviction on the definite offence proved against him, "the jury shall, unless the offender admits that he is an habitual drunkard, be charged to inquire whether he is one," and it is left to their common sense to fix the degree of intemperance which justifies confinement. Further, a schedule to the Act enumerates a list of offences which covers drunkenness in any place except the tippler's own home, whether accompanied by unruly conduct or not. A person convicted for the fourth time within twelve months of any of these offences is liable to be detained for not more than three years in any certified inebriate reformatory the managers of which are willing to receive him, and public money may be contributed to tho expense of his support in such private institution. It will be thus seen that the Imperial statute practically defines Che " habitual" to be any petson who is in a state of intoxication out of doors so frequently as once in three months on the average.

The chain of office belonging to chief magistrate of South Shields (England) was recently lost under rather peculiar circumstances. His Worship was at a garden party, and (so the story says), wearied with the burden of the golden mark of authority, he handed it to a leading mem&er of the local police force for safe keeping. Then, with a few brother councillors and friends, he enjoyed a few hours of pleasant social intercourse. When, however, he wanted the chain again it was nowhere to be found, and the officer to whom it had been entrusted had disappeared. A search was at once instituted, but for a time without result. Some hours later the missing chain, was brought to the station by a policeman, who had noticed it around the neck of a young lady in the town. The custodian to whom it had been given was found, and asked to explain how Venus came to be thus adorned with it. Civic dignity had been outraged ; his pleadings were in vain ; and he had to resign forthwith. Amusement has been caused among the "canny folk" of Shields and Tyneside by the incident, but so far as Shields is concerned the mirth is mixed with some anxiety, as 'tis said that a new chain will have to be purchased, as the mayors, present and prospective, will never allow their spouses to wear that tarnished symbol of civic power.

The " municipalisation" of bathißg machines is the latest undertaking by ;a local authority in England, the Portsmouth Town Council having decided to apply to Parliament for power to acquire and manage the bathing machines at Southsea.

Mr Fred Villiers, the veteran war correspondent, pays a high tribute to the gallantry of Major Stuart-Wortley and Captain Wood. " I really think (he writes) that the little exploit of Stuart-Wortley and young Woou was one of the best incidents pf the. Campaign. In less than a week of taking Gommand these two officers had managed to* make a fairly good fighting force of some of the worst riff-raff and scallywags of the Soudan, undisciplined, insubordinate Jaalin, Ababdeh, and Shukiyeh, who, at the slightest sign of a reverse, would have turned and cut the throats of their brave young leaders. To show what an uncertain quantity the force was, on approaching the fort, shelled into a proper frame of mind by the gunboats, Wortley's picturesque meb suddenly became panic stricken, beating a hasty retreat before some twenty dervishes who charged from a corner of the redoubt. Both officers heroically stood their ground and eventually rallied their men, but not till after considerable loss, and having to deal with the fanatics themselves, each pistolling a man."

Two good stories about the Archbishop of Canterbury are going the rounds. It is related that when he was the guest of a country clergyman he was much annoyed by the display of silver candlesticks in his room. After his lordship's departure these candlesticks were nowhere to be seen. The distressed clergyman at once wrote to the bishop, as he then was, telling him of his loss, and adding: " Can you tell us what has happened?" The renly came by wire: "Poor, but honest; look in the chest of drawers." .On another occasion he was " put up " by'a clergyman during the absence of the latter's wife. On leaving, the host politely expressed the hope that when next his lordship honored the house Mrs Temple would accompany him. "No thanks," the future Archbishop laconically replied; " Mrs Temple doesn't like roughing it." The clergyman's feelings were deeply hurt, for the visit had meant some expense and much anxiety to him. He unburdened his soul to his wife on her return. " Why, my dear," she exclaimed, "you didn't surely put the bishop in. the pink bedroom, did your He did. " Oh, theri, that's it. I put all the plate in the bed!"

The governing authorities of the City of London College at Moorfields will, at the commencement of 1899, make a departure in educational methods that is sure, to be watched with interest by all progressive educationists. It is, in short, an attempt to transplant on English soil a commercial school on the model of similar schools existing in Continental countries. It will practically be a continuation day school, and will give a three years' training to youths destined for commercial pursuits, and who end their term at an ordinary school at about sixteen years of age. The first two years will be spent in drilling in the general commercial routine, and the final year be occupied in equipping the student with technical and special knowledge of any particular branch of commercial enterprise he may be anxious and best fitted to follow. ETery information will be available, and competent men will act as Instructors, so that when the youth leaves the school he will have the chance of making, so to speak, " a flying start" in life. " City men are said to be strongly in favov of the scheme.

Again have the whirligigs of time brought about their revenge. It has been explained officially that the coup d'etat in China was occasioned by the Empress - Dowager to defeat her son's impending edict calling on the officials of the Celestial Empire to do away with the queue and adopt the foreign dress. Few people are apparently aware that the pigtail is of comparatively recent date in Chinese history, and that at the time of Marco Polo's journey, and for long subsequently, there was not a pigtail in the Empire. The ancient Chinese wore their hair Ipng and bound upon the top of the 1 head, and, taking pride in its glossy black, called themselves "the black-haired race." The pigtail in its origin was not a Chinese but a Manchu method of dressing the hair, and it has only been worn in the Middle Kingdom since the commencement of the present dynasty. When, in 1627, Wu San Kwei, the Chinese Imperial Com-mander-in-Chief, tendered his formal allegiance to the young Manchu princes, whom he had called In to quell an insurrection,

ad&f&o mys4 to found a dynasty, one of the catiditionß itipulated was that the Chinese should adopt the national costume ol the Minohus, including the plaited queue, on penalty oj death, as a sign of allegiance. The enforced adoption of .the pigtail was the cause of Union friction at' first, but it was insisted upon, and now it is considered by all alike as one of the most sacred characteristics of "the black-haired" people, and thus the fashion begun by compulsion is now>+followed by choice. It is, indeed, a stranae irony of fate that the Emperor should give offence by 'hjs attempt at doing away with a custom which his ancestors had Imposed upon the unwilling Chinese as .subjection to their Manchu con- ', . _ :2

An interesting anecdote was related by Lord Wantage at the Beading banquet following his installation as P.G.M. of the Berkshire Freemasons. He mentioned that it was his lot in early life to be first interested in Masonry by an event that happened to his |ather, the late General Lindsay, when serving in} the Walcheren Campaign in 1809. He was shot through the leg, and, being quite, disabled, he fell into the hands of the enemy; but no sooner was he carried from the field of battle than he discovered that his captor was a brother Freemason, who, true to the traditions of the craft, like the goo 1 Samaritan, dressed his wounds,, carried him into ha own house, and took charge of him of release, defraying all costs, without'any security for repayment.

Numerous German enthusiasts, on visiting the famous Luther House at Eisenach, have given expression to the idea of how delightful it would be to drink a glass of beer from the table at which Luther had sat. A brewing company in tho neighborhood have now conceived the idea of buying the house,'and, while retaining all its' characteristics, of turning it into a restaurant. An earnest appeal (says a correspondent of the ' Wily Mail') is being made to the Government pf Saxony to prevent the barbarisnvof using one of the country's most interesting historical remains for such a purpose. .' •

In deciding to take the title of Lord Khartoum, And-not Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, the Sirdar has departed somewhat from of late years. We have Lord Wolseley of Cairo and of Wolseley, Lord Roberts of Candahar, and Lord Napier of Magdaja, just as we had Lord Nelson of the Nile. iThe Sirdar has been well advised. His family name would not make a good title for a peerage, and the complaint sometimes, made that when a man becomes a peer His identity is lost in a new territorial title will never be able to be made in Sir Herbert's case. Lord Khartoum is a designation i which must always have a thrilling sound in the eara of Englishmen who lived through the betrayal of Gordon and its tardy avenging. A peer, like a baronet, is always created "of" somewhere, but, as a rule in modern times, the territorial tag is usfd only for the sake of distinction from a similar title. Arundell of Wardour, Napier <i Magdala, Curzon of Kedleston, are point. But the multiplication of similar titles (remarks a London contemporary) is very inconvenient.

A new service of motor cars has commenced to run in opposition to the Tramway Company's buses between Granton and Leith. There are two on the road, starting every ten minutes from each end. The fare is only 2d for three miles, and the passengers speak highly of the ease and comfort of travelling. It may be mentioned that about half a mile to the west of Granton a large motor ear factory is in course of erection, and already about sixty hands are busily employed in getting machinery in order and everything ready for a start at no distant date: ,

Tki present immigration from European Ru? 7 to Siberia, promoted by the progress $t the Transcontinental Railway, is assumrng a volume which threatens to seriously deplete the more sparsely populated of the interior provinces, and the Imperial Government itf devising measures to regulate the movement. The number of immigrants passing northwards through Tiumen during the past summer has averaged about 24,000 per month. The gneater part of these immigrants are miserably poor, but the pioneer hard&lips of jSiberiaa colonisation have no tervors-vdr the peopfa of majiy of the Volga Governments, who for years past have suffered from chronic famine.

" The tallest man in his army," who accompanied the German Emperor on his visit to Holy Land, is a grenadier named Chiemke, who is nearly. 6ft lOin in his stockings. This Frederick-William mania of the Kaiser's is an old device of his for impressing the foreigner. On returning from his first visit to Constantinople in 1889 the Emperor sent the Sultan a complete set of kettle-drums, which he entrusted to the tallest officer in his army, Lieutenant Pleskow, who is very little, if at all, under 7ft. Once, indeed, when hifi Prussian Guardsman looked over a 7ft garden wall and asked a girl picking gooseberries therein what was the way to so-and-so, the simple maiden told him *o ride first to the right and then to the left, and he would find the place he wanted. The nymph had honestly fancied that an officer overpeering wall like that must necessarily be on" horseback!

The biggest price yet paid for a bulldog has been handed over by Mr Guy Boothby, th«novelist, in exchange for Black Watch, litter brother to Bromley Crib, a very well-known winner at all the big shows since he created so great a sensation by beating the crack dog of Mr Sam Woodiwiss at Cheltenham last February. ' The amount paid in hard cosh was £3oo—-ii record price although £SOO has been refused by Mr Sam Woodiwiss for Champion Baron Sedgemere, whilst years ago Mr Beresford-Hope refused to be tempted by a bona fide offer of £350 to sell Bedgebury Lion: Last year Mr C. Meyrick, the actor, gave £275 for Champion Wimboolu, which up to quite recently was a record price for a specimen of the national breed.

In a back district in the Forty Mile Bush the other day a committee of ladies got up a concert to start a school library. They handed the money so raised to the teacher, to expend as he thought best. But the School Committee thought it right to have a say in the matter, and made a demand for tho money. The teacher could not, undjr the circumstances, give it up, but to avoid unpleasantness he handed it back to the ladies. As they still decline to pay it over to the School Committee, the members of the latter tendered their resignation, and, in doing so, asked the Education Board to fix an early date for another election, " so that they mav know whether the district endorses their action or otherwise." After laughing at the statement of facts, the Board decided to ask the aggrieved Committee to reeonsider their decision, and withdraw their resignation,

The cosmopolitan character of the British Army is evinced in the name of Subadarmajor Sirdar Bahadur Solomon Elijah, who died at Poona recently, and was burred in the Jewish Cemetery there, with full military honors. The band of the regiment and a large number of European officers attended the funeral. The Subadar-major had served with his regiment more than forty years, and was at the siege and capture of Ghuznee and through the first Afghan War. He fought also at Moultan, Goojerat, and in Central India.

A Russian officer. h,as been waking experiments, with very successful results, in the use of falcons instead of pigeons as carriers. It seems that they Can fly very much faster. A pigeon covers ten or twelve leagues in an hour, whereas a falcon can do fifteen. It can also carry with ease a fairly heavy weight, while a pigeon can only just manage a letter. Above all, there is not the danger that a falcon may be caught by some hjrd of prey on the road, or even for* it flies so high that he m.us»t he * ver J go°d shot who can reach it. A carrier falcon reoently accomplished the journey from Andalusia to Teneriffe in sixteen hours, which is not | bad going.