BREVITES

Evening Star, Issue 11895, 25 May 1903, Page 1

BREVITES

IA agar, according to * To-day,’ should not be held with the lig ited end pointed downwards. ITthere is any moisture in the cigar it drains towards the lighted end,, and thus spoils the flavor of your smoke. By tilting the cigar slightly* upwards the moisture runs into . the end The man who knows hoTf to smoke never smokes the butt end of a cigar, or the last little bit of tobacco in a pipe. In both cases the to- ' tacco is. spoilt ny the moisture, and ia best thrown away. A child is born in London every tl.,ee minutes, and a death is registered eveiy five minutes. Daily a million persons travel °“ the underground railways, and two and a-half millions in five thousand omnibuses, seven thousand hansoms, fourteen thousand cabs, and seven thousand transcars. Four thousand postmen deliver ten million letters weekly, walking a distance equal to twice the circumference of the globe. Sixty thou-, samd letters are written a day, consuming 1 ' oOgal of ink. Ten thousand miles of overhead telegraph wires almost shut out the smoky canopy which spreads above the same London streets, and the number of telegraph messages received in London last year was over six million. Ninety million B a ljunß of water are consumed daily. The latest estimate places the total num”er. of apple trees of bearing age in the United States at something over 200 millions {hays ‘Country Life in America’). This is nearly three trees to every person, these trees yield more than 175,000,000 bushels. Sir George White, in a letted read at the I adysmith anniversary dinner at the Hotel * Cecil, said: “My principal duty at home has been to put the defence of Ladysmith iq, its true light, and to claim for its bntye P n k^ c gratitude to which it is entitled.” An Italian engineer has made an iruportant discovery, by which telegraphic and telephonic communications may be sent simultaneously over the same wire. Dr Bickerton, writing in the ‘Praetitioner, thinks he has discovered a reasonable explanation of the contradictory evirf n - C V fte \ give ? in 4116 Admiralty Court. It is that the sailors on the great majority of vessels are not required to pass any test m color perception, as are captains and mates, and therefore it is quite possible for the look-out ”or the man at the wheel to be so completely color-blind that he docs not know a red light from a green one. Dr Bickerton suggests that all should be officially tested when there is any conflict of opinion as to the color of the lights seen. The town of Wismar, on thd Baltic, was given as a pledge by Sweden to Mecklen-bnrg-Schwerin on June 26,1803, in exchange oL I ™™ of i’ 2sß - 000 thaler (about £188,700), on condition that Sweden, after the lapse of 100 years, should be entitled to take back the town on repayment of the sum advanced, together with 3 per cent, interest per annum. The date for closing this bargain is approaching, and it may be with a feeling of relief (says ‘ The Times’s ’ correspondent in Berlin) that the Pan Germans now learn the decision of the Swedish Government, who asked the Swedish Parliament to empower them to waive the right to buy buck the town of Wismar. During 1902 the cigars and cigarettes smoked in France represented the respectable total of 4,050 tons. It is noticed that the smoking habits of the French people have undergone a great change during the past twenty years. Cigars have steadily declined in popular favor, and cigarettes have as. steadily advanced. The largest library in the world is the National Library of France, founded i-y Louis XIV. It contains 1,400,000 books, 300.000 pamphlets,' 175,000 manuscripts. 300.000 maps and charts, 150,000 coins and gold medals, 1,300,000 engravings, and 100.000 portraits. From the writings of Pliny the Elder it is evident that soap was known to the Romans as early as the first century. According to him, the ordinary article was prepared with ashes arid tallow, while a better quality of soap was made with goats’ fab and beechwood ashes. These products were not hard, but of the consistency of the common soft soap, and, curiously enough, were used frequently by the Gauls in bleaching their hair, and by the Romans as a perfume. Pliny says that the article most in use for washing was saponin, the mucilaginous produce of a Syrian plant, .Mr J. K. Sfott, an old resident of Bendigo, and at one time a leading share-broken’ in that city, died at the . Bendigo Hospital lately. Some years ago he was reputed to bo worth £1,000,000; but he lost all his wealth in mining speculations, and latterly had been drawing an old age pension. Hundreds of gallons of tea, coffee, ami chocolate, with 6,000 rolls and 5,000 pats of butter, are used every day at the Hole; Cecil, and the day’s menu includes also 303 gallons of soup and over a thousand “ portions ”of meat. The butcher’s bill is neariv £7OO a day, or over £30,000 a year, and £l5O worth of vegetables are bought every week. Fruit is specially grown on the hotel’s own estate of forty-tnree acres, and here, in greenhouses, which cost thousands of pounds to build, a dozen gardeners are always at work looking after flowers and fruit. Inside the hotel is a post office, a bakery, a laundry, and Turkish baths, and a dozen lifts are nearly always running. An interesting presentation to the King took place at the last levee. It was wat of Lord Fairfax, and the circumstances are narrated as follows by an American in England:—“As an American born, Lord Fairfax asked the American Ambassador to present him, and I believe Mr Choate was willing to do so, and arrangements were begun to that end, when it was discovered that if Lord Fairfax wished to be presented as an American, Mr Choate could present him, but must be as * Mister,’ and not as Lord Fairfax; and to be so presented would in some way, which I do not understand, compromise the use of the title afterwards. The alternative left was to have the presentation made by some peer of Scotland, and Lord Kinnaird presented Lord Fairfax.” Mr C. D. Gibson, the artist who created the lovely American girl with pen and ink, has just signed a contract with ‘Cellier’s Weekly to draw 100 cartoons for £20,000. He will still continue his work on ‘Life’ m which he created ‘The Widow and Her Friends and ‘ The Adventures of Mr Pip.’ When a Roumanian servant has displeased his or her master, the offender takes Iris boots in his hands and places them before the bedroom door of his master. It is a sign of great submission, and the boots are either lacked away as an intimation that the fault will not be forgiven, or else the servant is told to place them on his feet, which ■ shows that he is forgiven. The French astronomer M. Camille Flammorion, is credited with possessing one of his works bound in the skin of a lady who was one of his most devoted disciples She left strict orders m her will that the skin of her back should be taken off Vi-.rehov burial, and the volume in question bound therein, and presented to M. Flammarion. 1 hear that no fewer than four (says a correspondent in ‘Vanity Fair') have appealed to the Pope for a divorce lately, but not one of than has been grante 1 her petition. Among these Princesses arc the Infanta Enlalie d’Orleans, the youngest daughter of the ex-Queen Isabella of Spain and the Princess Philip of Saxe-Coburg.