SHAVINGS

Evening Star, Issue 20312, 22 October 1929, Page 14

SHAVINGS

Mr R. ' Mitchell was the successful tenderer for the new shop and dwelling at Caversham, now in the course ot erection. • • » * The Abbey Church of St. Peter and St Paul at Worchester-on-Thames claims to be one of the oldest surviving churches in the country. It was commenced about 1180, and 748 years after—l92B—it was wired for electricity without any structural alterations. « * • * Three hundred and fifty veal's ago the first attempt to clean up London was made when in 1580, eight years before the Armada, Queen Elizabeth issued a proclamation forbidding the erection of new buildings in London where none had existed before in the memory of man. This was an attempt to keep down the ever-recurrent plague. London, small as it was, was overcrowded, infested with beggars, and lacked air and adequate room to move about in. So it continued until tho Great Plague and Fire came to destroy it all. Even after that, Cromwell. in 1657, and Charles 11., in 1674, made vain attempts to stem the tide ot ever-increasing population; bi-.t growth continued, and the small town swelled into the metropolis of to-day. « « • ♦ On June 26 a party of American architects set sail from Plymouth, U.S.A., to see the architecture pt Europe. In one week, after crossing the Atlantic, they had seen the whole of rural England and then, having become thoroughly acquainted with all the masterpieces of Exeter, tho Cotswolds, and Oxfordshire, crossed to Paris. The Loire Valley and Bur gundy were taken by storm, and Rouen was visited, Switzerland, and the Italian cities and towns as far as Rome wore extensively photographed, and tha picture postcard merchants of Vienna met them on their way back to Paris by way of tho Riviera. A stop was also made at Arles, and Provence was seen in motor cars. Two months after setting out tho party arrived back in America, all much travelled men. who were bringing back old European culture to tho New World. f « * « While most of us are familiar with that wonderful and efficient machine, the electric vacuum cleaner, which does away with tho old-fashioned dust pan and brooin and keeps our homes scrupulously clean with hardly any effort, wo are apt to overlook the fact that the benefits derived from the use of electricity for cleaning purposes are equally available in connection with the cleaning and polishing of floors. There are now available several types of electric polishing and scrubbing machines which wilt scrub, wax, and polish the floor in a short space of time. Linoleum, wood, <ork, tiles, and floor compositions can be easily and efficiently cleaned with the aid of this appliance, which can bo used continuously for ono hour for the current consumption of one-eighth of a unit, so that if' wo take the average cost per unit as 2d, tho cost of running would be (d per hour.