INTERESTING ITEMS.

Golden Bay Argus, Volume XII, Issue 46, 14 April 1910, Page 3

INTERESTING ITEMS.

Caruso receives £4OO a night for grand opera id New York.

Last yeai twenty-two sentences of the “ cat ” were inflicted.

Empire Day this year was celebrat ed by 15,000,000 children,

Fire insurance policies in the United Kingdom last year cost £26,000,000,

W. Bardsley, the Australian cricketer, had an average last year in Australia of 83.

Austria proposes taxing bachelors and widows a nd married people without children,

No fewer than 150 English officers are competing this year in the International Horse Show.

Three Canadian railway systems will construct 1,000 miles of railway during the present year.

Twenty-eight and one-fifth seconds is the shortest time on record in which a motor-car has covered a mile.

There are about 9,500,000 telephones in the world. Of these Europe has 2.400,000, and America 6,900,000.

Dreadnoughts must have a maximum displacement of 17,000 tons, and a minimum armament of ten big guns.

On the whole, it must be said that the day is dark for small tradesmen. Any considerable multiplication of small business is precarious. because the conditions can stil! be made and lifted to success. Keep the rules and learn the tables; the sum can be done. The diminutive trade increases the worth of a penny. “There Is an element of pathos, even ol tragedy, in the remorseless process by which the big manufacturer or trader uses sheer economic forco to crush the smaller, weaker competitor, and take away his business.” All right, the fun is all the greater when a mouse nibbles the rope and binds the lion. A capable tradesman in the right plaice can still have the laugh at the big competitor. His Dreadnoughts can only attack five miles away, and cannot coast near the shore.— The Magazine of‘Commerce."

Holiday-making is like flirting. As a popular novelist has observed of the latter pastime, you either cannot do it—in which case no one can teach you—or you can do it—and in that case no one can stop you. But there is an< objective, as well as a subjective side to the science of holi-day-making. There probably has never keen a race more or less civilised human beings who had not some fixed holidays or least-days.— "Morning Leader."

Have you ever reflected, when you finish up your letter “Yours sincerely, John Smith,” why you do so. or whence came the origin of this epistolary method of subscribing to your state of soul in regard to any particular correspondent ? Well, if you subscribed yourself “Yours without wax, John Smith,” it would amount to the same thing. WheD the Roman jurymen returned their verdicts they usually, did so on a wax tablet (cera). So when you subscribe yourself “Yours sincerely” to a person you mean—when you are serious, of course—that your regard for him is above board. “Yours faithfully” is the business style ; “Yours truly” the indifferent, and “Yaurs, etc,” the most unpardonable of epistolary atrocities, according to the unwritten code. A Frenchman will telLyou that ‘"he remains with especial sentiments of the highest considerationyour Jules Le Moutom A Chinaman will say : “Farewell, most favoured of Heaven May the gods preserve your honourable teeth.” ■