WHAT MIGHT BE DONE.

Golden Bay Argus, Volume IX, Issue 26, 26 November 1903, Page 3

WHAT MIGHT BE DONE.

What might be done if men were wise l What glorious deeds, my suffering brother Would they unite In Love and Right, And cease their scorn for one another 1

Oppression’s heart might be imbued With kindling drops of loving kindnaan, And knowledge pour From shore to shore Light on the eyes of mental blindness. All Slavery, Warfare, Lies, and Wrongs; All Vice add Crime might die together; And wine and corn To each man born Be free as warmth in summer weather.

The meanest wretch that ever trod, The deepest sunk in guilt and sorrow, Might stand erect, In self respect, And share the teeming world to-morrow. What might be done ? This might be done; And moke than this, my suffering brother— More than the tongue E’er said or sung, If men were wise and loved each other.

THE INVENTOR OF THE RAIL WAY TICKET.

Take a sheet of pasteboard as large as Hyde Park, cut it up into slips an inch and a quarter wide and two and a Quarter inches long, and you will have rather less than the number of railway tickets used in Great Britain during twelve months. Put the slips end to end, and you will have a ribbon that will reach round the world.

In 1839 an ingenious Friend who had failed in business had obtained a situation as booking-clerk on the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway. He had to book the passengers as the passengers were booked for the old mail-coaches —that is, to write out their names in full, fill in particulars of the date and station and class, and tear off the ticket from a printed sheet. It was a very natural arrangement but cumbrous, and one day as he was walking in a certain Northumbrian field, and reached a certain spot in that field—the spot being known to this day—an idea occurred to him of quite another “spin down the ringing groove of change ” to that to which he was accustomed.

“ Why all this fumbling and spelling of people’s names? Why not treat them anonymously and number them? Why not a strip of stiff' paper, of pasteboard, printed with names of stations and class, consecutively numbered for accounting purposes, and dated on the day of issue to prevent fraud? Two machines could do it 1” And off went Thomas Edmondson to think it over with his friend Blaylock, the watchmaker; and together they made the first machines. But to get the new system introduced was not easy. The Newcastle and Carlisle directors would have nothing to do with it; they were content to leave well alone; and they left it, with the view of profiting by other people’s experience. Edmondson had to look elsewhere, and soon secured two strings to his bow—a short one near home, and a longer one. The short one was part of the Manchester and Leeds line, on which he was permitted to give his invention a trial; the longer one was in the west. *

And so to the manager did Edmondson apply, with the result that a tioket-rack was set up at Bromsgrove and at all the other stations to Cheltenham by the old road which went to the east of Worcester. The terms for the use of the invention were half-a-sovereign per mile of road per year; and at these termß, other companies rushing in where the Manchester and Leeds, and Birmingham and Gloucester had not feared to tread, Thomas Edmondson soon grew rich. But an honest man was Edmondson as well as an ingenious one. As soon as he had the funds he called his old creditors together, and paid his debts in full, and then with a clear conscience he resigned himself to live on his royalties, find other uses for his money, and make many a pilgrimage to the spot of earth on which he had concoived his happy idea. He had a brother, a distinguished schoolmaster, who, being also a railway-minded man, was propressive enough to introduce the study of Bradshaw into his academy’s curriculum, and set his pupils to work out problems on cross-routes and connections. Both Edmondsons have been credited with having devised an arrangement which rocked the cradle and churned the butter at the same time, but we believe the honour is really Thomas’s, who had invented many things before he dated his ticket and booked himself to fame. —From the Leisure Hour. SCRAPS. “ Milliner ” is said to be a corruption of “ Milaner,” so-called from Milan, in Italy, which at one time gave the law to Europe in all matters of taste, dress, and elegance. French people do not celebrate their birthdays as we do. They hold what is called their name-days. A woman named Mary, for instance, would hold the day in the year devoted to the Virgin Mary.

Greenbacks are notes issued by the United States Government, and are so called 'from the colour of their backs. The nickname was given them by the American Boldiers when they were first issued in 1863. In mound-burial, the Scandinavians seem to have placed the dead in a sitting attitude —often, indeed, in chairs—like the Nasamones and the Fingalian Celts. Yet another custom was to bury carriages and horses along with a chief, so that he might make a proper entry into Valhalla.

The Turkish star and crescent is a curious relic of the old worship of the moon and Diana. This goddess was the ancient patroness of Byzantium, or Constantinople, and when Mahomet 11. took the city in 1453

he adopted the crescent moon for his device in honour of the victory. The flag is a red ground, #itli the crescent and star in white.

A nautical knot is a division of the logline, which is the same fraction of a mile as half a minute is of an hour, that is, it is the hundred and twentieth part of a nautical mile; hence, the number of knots run off the reel in half a minute Bhows the vessel’s speed per hour in miles, so that when a ship goes eight miles an hour, she h said to go eight knots. Hence, a nautical mil* or 6086-7 feet.